Hell Butterfly
by Alliriyan
Summary: What lives in the slivers between dimensions? When does an arrancar become a vaizard, and what power will the Hougyoku unleash at the zero point between the two? Ichigo will go anywhere, take on anyone to protect his friends, but when his sister is turned against him he learns that survival lies only in the claws of his inner enemy... As Aizen wages war against heaven and earth.
1. Overload

**~o) Hell Butterfly (o~**

**Overload**

**~01~**

_Dark void eye_

_Blinking open_

_Severs reality_

_Limbo path_

**o)0(o**

"Okay, okay! All set?"

Standing before towering spires of rock under an artificial blue sky, three classmates steeled their nerves in preparation for the unknown future that was fast approaching.

"Looks like everyone's finally ready. Here we go."

Kneeling down on one knee, Urahara rapped the base of his cane sword against his perch and gripped its handle tightly.

"My right hand is the stone that bridges worlds."

He recited apparently senseless chains of words that called forth power – the art of demon magic drawing reiatsu up and out of his core. "My left hand is the blade that binds reality."

Sky blue flames enveloped his hand, channelling down through his zanpakuto Benihime and igniting the mammoth gallows. Tessai nodded proudly from a distance, arms crossed high on his chest; sunglasses glinting with zeal. He himself had designed and taught Kisuke this spell.

"The black-haired shepherd is hung from a chair."

Bridging worlds to form a path between dimensions; binding reality so that the travellers were not torn apart in the void. A shepherd to guide them to the correct destination. It was a masterpiece of kido. Few others could have condensed it to only four lines.

"Stratus clouds come, and I strike down the ibis!"

Though of course, some was just there because it sounded cool.

With a noise like a distorted power chord a seam appeared in empty air. A slash cut through worlds blinking open into an infinitely dark eye. The opening seemed to stare at them, and they felt it weigh down on their souls.

Soon that eye would become a mouth, and swallow them all. And they'd go willingly.

For Inoue…

In all of their trials and bloody battles in this world and the next, she had been there. Healing, shielding; preventing and undoing the kind of harm that others could only attempt to avenge.

She had been there.

And she was going to _stay_ there.

Yet although Ichigo was absolutely determined to rescue Inoue whether her kidnapping was voluntary or not, he had more than a few reservations about entering Hueco Mundo. Besides it being an unknown land crawling with enemy Hollows, it was also the natural habitat of his own inner demon. And waltzing into the pale bastard's home territory felt as intelligent as serving himself up on a silver platter to the nearest Aizen.

Though to be honest it didn't really matter, nor did his misgivings. Always he was aware of what Inoue had done for their sakes, to save them in the only way a weak human could. And it was the exact same thing: stand before a mysterious portal into the afterlife where god knows how many enemies were waiting, grit teeth, and walk forwards for no other reason than friendship.

"If you want to save your friend, you'd better get a move on; ne, Kurosaki-kun?" jibed Urahara, interrupting the teenager's musing and twirling his cane with the blue flame and skull of a shinigami on the tip.

"Shut up," Ichigo snapped bluntly. "I don't see you heading into the gaping maw of hell."

"Ahhh, poetic, poetic, but totally inaccurate, Kurosaki-kun. Hell-gates you should really recognise by now. This is the path to Hueco Mundo. A pseudo-Garganta. Your ticket to paradise."

Sarcasm. Always available to make a grim situation tasteless, just add geta-boshi. He replied with a filthy glare.

"Ara! Be a little more respectful, Kurosaki-kun! This is a thing of _beauty_; a passage through the infinite spaces hidden between dimensions that are infinitely close. Besides…it's my way or no way."

"Just tell me there isn't a freaking 'cleaner' in this one," sighed Ichigo.

Hopping down to the ground, the former Gotei Thirteen captain raised his hands and shrugged. "I doubt it. There aren't any paths inside – only a constant, turbulent flow of spirit particles." He gestured to the drifting, swirling clouds of indistinct dust motes. "So unless Aizen installed one, you should be fine. …I hope."

The three boys slumped. They had incredible bad luck with senkai gates. There was no way they would be fine.

**o)0(o**

Tia Hallibel, with her cocoa skin and lemon-yellow hair, made a dark contrast to the chalk-white walls of Las Noches's barricades. This the Vasto Lorde noticed as he crouched before her, glancing up occasionally. He had arrived seeking entry, and at his level could easily gatecrash if refused…but she seemed confident in her ability to dissuade him. She could also stand in his presence without the slightest flicker of pain, so he waited there, weighing her up. She folded her arms calmly and stared back. The guy had the mannerisms of a hyena pretending to be shy. But he was therefore nothing more than a scavenger, whereas _she_ was a predator.

A long, shallow ravine had been scrawled through the sand of the bone-coloured desert, from its furthest visible horizon all the way to the tip of the Grande Menos's tail. The tail itself appeared to be nothing other than an elongated, bared spinal cord. Like most top level Menos his body was armoured with a pale hierro – or in other words steel skin. He was also bruised with the speckles and splotches of a wild dog's markings all over. At every other heartbeat reiatsu pounded out of him, more than he could control; and it was this power that had scarred the land everywhere he walked. Constant clouds of sand danced around, disturbed by the Vasto Lorde's presence.

"I've been hearing things…" he muttered, sidling closer to the woman. "Things about an 'Izzen' and his little ball."

"Aizen," corrected Hallibel; "and the Hougyoku." Her voice was clipped and uninterested, yet mentally she was pleased at the spread of their leader's fame. A new Espada and a new battle for supremacy in the pecking order would make life a little less monotonous. She was already looking forward to beating this newcomer into submission. He seemed intelligent if one considered his behaviour a misleading act, but his reiatsu control was abysmal. He was now standing in a small crater after the ground had been blown away.

"You got a pretty face with that mask broken off. How'd he work that, your Aizen guy?"

She snorted. The only part of her face visible between her low fringe and high collar was her eyes, and those were coldly condescending. Though even that was more attractive than a jackal-mask scarred by immeasurable time and harsh trials, like the would-be intruder bore.

"So you want to join us and become more powerful…" sighed Hallibel, reaching behind and hooking her middle finger through the ring on the crossguard of her sword. Her arm stretched out to its fullest extension as she unsheathed the short blade. It had no centre, only an outline. Spinning it with a jerk of her hand, the hilt fell into her palm. "We're outside Las Noches, so this should be fine."

The hyena-man leapt backwards, skidding into a wary pouncing position at the base of the newest crater that his booming reiatsu had punched into the shifting ground.

"My name is Tia Hallibel, the Tercera Espada. And only if you can survive this…" There came an explosion of spiritual pressure that cracked the vast walls behind her before she had even begun to release her true form. "Only then will I ask for _your_ name."

**o)0(o**

"Ichi-nii's vanished again," wept Yuzu, garnishing that night's healthy and delicious dinner with salty tears. "Karin-chan! Why is he never home? Are we too young and annoying for him? Does he…does he…hate my cooking that much?"

Her black-haired fraternal twin sister recalled the various times she'd witnessed their brother's soul chopping huge-ass monsters into itty-bitty pieces with a humongous sword, factored in circumstantial evidence such as his being Don Kanonji's spirit guide 'Boy!', concluded with the time she'd seen him burst straight out of his body and astral project with the help of some kind of gizmo; then rolled her eyes at her sister in mild exasperation.

"Yuzu," she stated calmly; "Ichi-nii's disappearances have nothing to do with your cooking." To illustrate this point she took a huge mouthful of food and closed her eyes blissfully whilst chewing. Mmmm. Yuzu's cooking was the best.

The (much) more domesticated sister poked her rice and stir fry around with a pair of chopsticks. Slowly Karin realised that her twin was genuinely upset.

"Don't worry about it," she said in the most reassuring and least sarcastic voice she could muster (it was a Herculean effort). And then she spoke the simple truth: "Ichi-nii's a zombie."

Kurosaki Isshin wisely chose that moment to come charging into the room and totally distract the topic of conversation. "Yuzu-CHAAAAN! I have come to taste the fruits of your labour – good evening my sweet Masaki –" he blew a kiss at the poster on the wall; "is dinner ready?"

The only one of his children to take after his wife in looks turned to face him with a horrified and heartbroken visage. "O-Otou-san…Karin-chan said Ichi-nii is…is…undead!" she wailed.

Her father managed to look suitably shocked, but not for the right reasons. Karin knew about that? Did she know _he _knew? Did she know about _him_? For that matter, did Ichigo know she knew, and if he did, and she knew about _him_; then did Ichigo know what Karin knew about both of them and just wasn't saying anything? Or –

His brain promptly fried, and he gave up trying to figure out the implications of Karin knowing what she had implied she knew.

"Let me clasp you to my loving parental bosom, Yuzu-chan! Don't tell your poor, sweet, innocent sister such nasty things, Karin-chan, it's not like you…and then she'll cry, and then I'll cry, and then –"

Karin's patience snapped.

"If you can't even _see_ ghosts, then you shouldn't talk about things you don't know about, Oyaji!"

They both stared at her, dumbfounded. She was being deadly serious.

"Yuzu-chan, it's exactly the same as when we were helping Don Kanonji fight the monsters! Ichi-nii does that too! And when that crazy guy goes on about knowing our brother, it's because he's met him as a ghost – and when Ichi-nii is acting _really_ weird he's a zombie and he's not inside his body!" She laid her ace on the table, temper flaring. "Haven't you ever wondered why Karakura King is always in Ichi-nii's room?"

"I thought that was Bostov…" Yuzu cut in.

"Karakura King _is_ Bostov…" explained Karin slowly, amazed her sister had never realised this for herself. It seemed to be the worst revelation of the night.

"Bostov is a cross-dresser?" shrieked the girl, throwing her hands into the air. Isshin was totally lost. His daughters were talking about the unknowable secrets of daughter-land, that Karin had always very firmly prevented him from intruding into. He had no idea if any of Karin's evidence related to anything real.

Wait a second.

Karin and Yuzu had been fighting monsters with Don Kanonji?

"I…don't get it…Karin-chan. Ichi-nii isn't dead."

"I've seen him leave his body. He's done it right in front of me."

Well that was clear enough. Time to intervene!

Eyes catching fire with righteous indignation, Isshin loomed behind his dark-haired tomboy child with his fists raised. "For trying to scare your sister with ridiculous stories…PUNISHMENT!" he intoned in a deep and terrifying voice. He pulled up short. "Oops, violence is how Otou-san deals with your brother. Now then, beloved daughter, this is clearly a plea for more attention from your adoring-yet-busy-saving-lives Daddy-chan!" he proclaimed, throwing his arms wide in an attack-hug and pronouncing the last word in bad English.

Karin kicked him in the head after performing a remarkable flying leap to attain the correct height. "Bring it on!" she roared, raising her own fists in a stance Tatsuki had taught her once. "I can _so_ take you!"

"Dinner is getting cold," said Yuzu quietly.

"Despite your being my darling little daughter whom I could never harm a single hair of, I must respect your personality choices, Karin! So yes, let us fight…a battle to end all battles, a war to end all wars…a middle-aged man with a lifetime's experience of Isshin-Fu versus his small, defenceless daughter…" By the end of the sentence he was sobbing. "This is totally unfair…"

"Yup, you're gonna get owned;" agreed Karin.

"I take it neither of you want pudding," whispered Yuzu, bowing her head in regret.

Her father and twin immediately sat down and began to eat their dinner in a civilised manner. If the Kurosaki household had one golden rule, it was this: do not upset Yuzu's family meals.

After pudding had been polished off Isshin suddenly remembered an important announcement he needed to make. In the midst of all the drama and mayhem and declarations of war he had completely forgotten to mention it.

"Oh! Daddy is going shopping for medical supplies tomorrow and will be out nearly all day, so he needs you two to be good and not burn the clinic down whilst he's gone."

"As if we would!" huffed Karin, licking the last crumbs of chocolate cake off her fork.

"And remember to ask the neighbours for help if you need anything. And don't invite any boys round. And get your homework done as soon as you come in, unless you're rebelling against the oppressive national education system; and don't have any raves, and…"

"Okay, Otou-san!" chirped Yuzu brightly, if only to shut him up before he really got into his flow. "We'll take care, don't worry. And I'll leave your dinner in the fridge if you're back late."

"Such a wonderful daughter!" cried Isshin, all choked up.

**o)0(o**

Aizen Sosuke lifted his fingertips away from the oily black surface of the now famed and feared Hougyoku, which had once been Urahara's deadly secret. He aimed a smile at his new super-soldier that was designed only to show his own self-satisfaction rather than welcome a newcomer into the elite. Every time he used the orb it gave out greater power; as it matured, every new Espada raised the bar.

Though they were not all perfect. Wonderwice Margera, despite having enormous potential, seemed to have paid for it with his intelligence. Simplistic to the extreme, he had never been reliable enough to be awarded a rank. But with this addition, the hierarchy of his Espada could be rearranged and he would be able to measure how much more power had been extracted this time.

A cube of crystal panes reclosed about the Hougyoku when he withdrew his fuelling reiatsu – at least double that of any other captain – and the large glass coffin encasing his latest disciple shattered into dust.

A long, thin hand slowly reached up, and Hueco Mundo's most recently reborn arrancar started to tug the obscuring bandages from its body. They were slightly similar to lethality stone in that they insulated reiatsu, allowing all the energy of the Hougyoku to be channelled into the target Hollow and stopping any from escaping. It could not be wasted on flares and lightshows – the glass box being another technique to help achieve maximum results. A mask can only be broken once.

Now the Vasto Lorde was dragging the clinging ribbons off of his arms and head, revealing bit by bit the person underneath. Shards of white bone fell and clicked against the smooth stone floor. Standing behind Aizen, Hallibel shifted her balance from side to side, feeling the suspense as her recruit unveiled himself.

"Tell us your name," prompted Tousen, standing strictly to attention as the man who felt most keenly the ceremony of the situation. "And the title of your resurrección."

"…It's been a long time since I had a name…" said the arrancar huskily, feeling the skin and mouth and eyelids he had not borne for decades. "Been even longer since I had a face." His hair was a pale brown, the remnants of his Hollow mask rested on the top of his head. The shape resembled a jackal as before, appearing like a crown in honour of the Egyptian god Anubis.

"My name is…Perro Rabioso." He curled his clawed fingers around the hilt of short dagger, showing a control over his abilities that he had previously lacked. "And the title of my true form," he unsheathed the blade and held it poised just below his opposite shoulder; "is _morder, el chacal!_"

It was like being hit by ten thousand sledgehammers. An explosion of reiatsu thundered out of the arrancar's body, blazing with blinding magnesium light as white as the sands of Hueco Mundo, the hallways of Las Noches, the mask of a Hollow.

Most of the Espada fell to their knees from the unexpected pressure. Stark and Barragan seemed fairly unaffected but even they were wearing expressions of discomfort. Ulquiorra and Hallibel had the presence of mind to negate the blast with ceros of equal mass. The torrential force seemed to just reflect off Aizen. His sole reaction was one raised eyebrow, and a slight tilt of his head.

"Impressive," he murmured, the word lost in the noise of the storm.

Deep cracking sounds of the ground being ripped apart and the ceiling falling in made him sigh. "Perhaps we should have told Rabioso about the 'no resurrecciones indoors' rule…" he noted to Gin, before realising that his right hand man was gritting his teeth and swaying. Beads of sweat rolled down the albino's face as his eyes went in and out of focus. Tousen's state was even worse.

Perturbed, Aizen re-examined the quality of Perro Rabioso's reiatsu. There was no control to it, and no end in sight. An erupting volcano of white-hot lava.

Lifting his hand, the traitor shinigami captain shouted out the incantation of a high-level kido spell. For an instant, a vast noir cage hid the overloading Vasto Lorde from view.

"RETREAT!" roared Barragan, the self-styled king, into the brief silence. White shatter-lines began to scribble over the surface of the black box. The pressure was building again, to an ear-popping level.

Sonido and shunpo emptied the chamber in the blink of an eye. Seconds later, from a safe distance of a mile or two away; the group witnessed the collapse of the great dome in a column of colourless fire.

Nnoitra crouched down and stroked the ground with his fingertips. Pesquisa soon confirmed that the rare, coveted Menos was no more. He had been destroyed by his own prodigious might.

"What a weakling," snorted the Quinta Espada.

Ulquiorra dropped Inoue Orihime to the sand. She squeaked in surprise then flinched, as if expecting punishment for the uninvited sound. Yet she was ignored the moment her rescue from the collapsing castle was ascertained. "Trash," agreed Ulquiorra, turning away from the dust clouds of Las Noches with a bored expression. "Is this what you consider worthy of us, Hallibel?"

The sole female Espada pressed her palm against his face and released a point blank Bala before he was even aware that she had moved. He stumbled backwards, skin quickly regenerating although for a second his green tear marks had been replaced by the dark red of blood.

"Know your place," warned the woman.

Any retaliation was interrupted by Aizen tossing the Hougyoku carelessly into the air and catching it one-handed. All eyes followed its lazy ascension and swift descent; mesmerised.

"Hallibel was not to blame," he said quietly, staring at the sphere intently.

**o)0(o**

"You should make it to Hueco Mundo if you head towards the darkness."

"Got it," replied Ichigo, considering a moment before continuing. "Urahara-san."

The striped hat turned towards him, as did the eyes shadowed beneath its rim.

"Could you take care of my family for me? Maybe say something so they don't worry about me."

"I understand." A strong wind from the portal ruffled his green haori as two differing air pressures between the two differing dimensions collided. "And your friends?"

Ichigo dropped his head down slightly, looking grim. Although the red mark had faded from his cheek soon enough after Tatsuki's right jab, the bruise from his skull smashing through a window was still happy to remind him of its presence every time he moved his neck too far. It was only a slight, dull pain. He actually found it nostalgic that even after he'd challenged the elite of the afterlife and triumphed, Tatsuki could still pummel him the way she had since they were kids. The fragility of his human body compared to his soul was far less humorous, however. And damage to one was shared with the other…

"I'll apologise to them once I get back."

Then again, perhaps he'd never see his body again.

Urahara said nothing for a moment, listening to Tatsuki, Keigo and Mizuiro squabble quietly behind the giant boulder that was their hiding place; arguing why they shouldn't leap out and hug their friend with a loud cry of "ICHI-GOOO!" as Keigo wished to. Grievous bodily harm courtesy of Japan's second strongest female martial artist settled the matter.

"I understand," he answered the orange-topped fifteen-year-old, trying not to grin.

Ichigo clenched his fist, not knowing that Inoue had held it all too briefly; his mouth pinched into a thin, determined line, not knowing that she had hovered over it and left her tears on his cheek. He shared a nod with Ishida and Chan, and then settled his sights on the Garganta. "Let's go!"

And they leapt.

**o)0(o**

**Blooper/Omake**  
to be known henceforth as:  
BLOOMAKE!

Or; the Arrancar Encyclopaedia.

**o)0(o**

Aizen swore, fluidly and furiously in a rare display of rage.

He had finally obtained a fifth Vasto Lorde, and the idiot was dead.

How demeaning to be killed by one's own strength. He would make damn sure that his limits never visited him again, once God was defeated.

But how was he meant to do that with the kind of progress that involved scraping bits of hollows off the walls?

Gin lurked in the corner of the room, wisely avoiding his master? Friend? Partner in crime? at a time when he was totally OOC. "Geez," he grinned. "Ain't no way in the chicken-frying south he's gonna put up with that happenin' again."

Well, at least one of them was behaving properly. Tousen swept through the bright hallways, the only one who saw them as black, and searched for unjust hollows to lecture. After all justice isn't kindness. Justice is only what the strongest chooses for it to be.

Wonderwice totally agreed, shadowing the ex-taicho like an autistic duckling of doom. He also thought that cooing was an Olympic sport and that butterflies were the best thing since sliced Bala.

Because Vasto Lordes were so achingly rare, Aizen was beyond furious.

"Szayel!" he screamed petulantly. Soon the smarmy pink carnival reject arrived and knelt before him. "Tell me why, exactly, my beautiful arrancar killing machines cannot godmode as well as a freaking 15 year old ryoka!"

"Huuuurm…." hummed the scientist. "Perhaps that Vasto Lorde had already reached his limits of expansion. I mean it's not exactly a common achievement. Perhaps we need to find recruits who, like the Kurosaki boy, have an infinite potential for reiatsu."

"Can you get me one?" squealed Aizen, throwing the Hougyoku in the air and clapping like a giddy aunt.

…

They vacated the area and ignored him after that, trying to scrub the afterimage of Aizen dancing from their brains.

**o)0(o**

_Chapter notes: Perro Rabioso is Spanish for 'Rabid Dog'. Morder, el chacal means 'Bite, Jackal'. _

_Alliriyan~*_


	2. Fall Out

**~o) Hell Butterfly (o~**

**Fall Out**

**~02~**

**o)0(o**

Ichigo was running through a silver wilderness, and feeling rather positive about the dangers ahead. For a start, he had managed to walk through that inter-dimensional rift without dropping Chad off the edge of his clumsy reiatsu bridge, which was quite an achievement for him even if Ishida did make it look pitifully easy. And having arrived in the notorious pit of horrors Hueco Mundo, they had discovered it to be pleasingly empty and remarkably clean and spacious. He'd been expecting it to be a pigsty.

After wandering the halls aimlessly for a few minutes, searching for someone or something they could pummel into giving them directions; he, Ishida and Chad had happened across two low-level arrancars.

Demoura was tall and bulky, his head scraped the high ceilings of the bland corridors, and he had seemingly been built on the same scale as a dinosaur. Iceringer on the other hand had been compact in comparison, streamlined in a fashion; with random branches and needles sticking out of him to ruin the effect.

And then those branches had begun firing laser beams.

Typical.

But less typical had been the way both Ishida and Chad elbowed him out the way, refused to let him fight despite his being the strongest hands down, and then finished off each others' opponents with ease. Which had been a bit of a shock because last he heard, Ishida had lost all of his powers.

He was beginning to understand how other people felt every time _he_ powered up, after seeing the Quincy whip the spirit bow-equivalent of a Gatling gun out of nowhere and start turning the enemy into pulp at twelve hundred shots per second.

Ichigo would freely admit that he had gulped and felt extremely glad that he was no longer being targeted as a hateful shinigami by his bespectacled friend…

"Oi," he asked suddenly, as they jogged over the endless dunes; "what was the name of your snowflake thing?"

"What did you call it?" demanded Ishida icily. He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose for the thousandth time – running through sand is both too jarring and too soft, so it was a hopeless attempt, really.

"Uh…the spider web bow?" Its name had been ridiculously long and overcomplicated. It had also been announced in a cool, quiet voice in the midst of many blasting sounds as Quincy and Arrancar engaged in fiery laser beam war. Who could possibly be expected to remember such a thing?

"You couldn't possibly be referring to Lone Sparrow on a Silver Cliff when you utter such heinous words, could you?" You would have to swallow an iceberg to match the frostiness of his speech.

"I dunno," replied Ichigo blankly; "is that what it's called? The star-shaped bow?"

"It's pentacular!" insisted the top student of their year.

A low rumbling sound emitting from beneath the thick wavy fringe of their overly tall amigo indicated imminent speech. They listened closely.

"That…is not a word…"

"Unless you wanted it to sound like spectacular. And if that's true I'm feeding you to the next Hollow I see." You couldn't trust a guy who wore capes not to have reasoning like that.

Ishida's cheeks burned with embarrassed rage. "I meant pentalateral. No! Quintescent! Ahh!"

"Five-angular?" suggested Ichigo, with a rather mocking expression. His pale, bookish comrade fumed.

"That's even less of a word!"

"Why can't you just use something simple like 'el directo'? Chad's got the right idea."

"It's not like I have to shout 'moon-fang slices the heavens' every time I swing my sword, you overly-verbose ape!"

Ichigo tried to find a cutting rejoinder, failed, and settled for petty nitpicking. "You don't even have a sword!"

"I could if I wanted," said Ishida mysteriously, the effect ruined as his glasses fell off during the next skid down a sand ridge.

They halted whilst the Quincy sifted around short-sightedly for his precious seeing-implements.

"Doesn't Espada mean sword?" wondered Ichigo off-handed, scratching at the coarse grains trapped in his highlighter-orange hair. "Chad?"

The foreign Goliath looked down at his first and best friend. "I'm half-Mexican…not Spanish."

Recovering his glasses and affixing them firmly to his face, for the next ten minutes at least, Ishida took the opportunity to show off his intelligence as well. "But aren't Spanish and Mexican closely related, Sado-kun?"

Chad considered this. "The differences between Mexican and Spanish are…" he trailed off for several seconds, deep in thought. Ishida nodded enthusiastically, eager for the answer, whilst Ichigo just shook his head and continued walking, knowing how it would end.

"…and that's how it is." As usual, he had forgotten to say the middle before reaching the end. His one-man audience looked less than impressed.

Ichigo waved at them from a fair distance away. "Heeeeeey!" he hollered. "Rescue mission, remember? If you've got your bottle-bottom glasses then hurry up, Quincy!"

The uptight teenager nearly hissed. "At least I can aim, Kurosaki!"

Breaking back into a fast jog, they regrouped and carried on their way.

There was a pleasant silence interrupted only by the huffing sounds of long-distance runners, until Chad volunteered an observation, a rare occurrence for him.

"It _is_ quite contradictory for a sniper to be blind…"

"Oh shut up; el idiota!"

**o)0(o**

Aizen studied the swirling surface of the Hougyoku, ink-black with the faintest suggestion of inner galaxies. Not for the first time, he wondered what it was made of…

Urahara Kisuke was indeed a genius.

The Hougyoku was one of the most powerful tools in existence, yet it was small enough to roll in the palm of his hand. It could grant unlimited power, yet few could handle such a blessing. It was still growing in potency, yet it was already working too well.

Rabioso would have been a powerful asset, and Vasto Lordes were far rarer than gold dust. The loss angered him.

But the loss of control over the Hougyoku _infuriated_ him.

The soft steps of Szayel Apollo's approach made him clench his fist around the treacherous device, and turn to the door. He made no effort to disguise his ire. Perhaps it would inspire the Espada in his attempts to discover a solution. Though of course, being who he was, Aizen had already decided on at least six courses of action.

"Well?" snapped the shinigami, when his disciple failed to open his mouth fast enough. The yellow eyes opened wider in slight surprise.

"I have gathered the remnants of Perro's reiatsu and analysed its structural flexibility –"

"I already know what you have _don_e." His impatience was clear and his displeasure palpable. The pressure of his malevolent aura was crushing. Mere seconds of exposure left Szayel feeling wretchedly weak and feeble, as though his muscles were disintegrating. "Tell me what you have _learned_."

"S-subsequent supplicants of the Hougyoku require a…" muttered the scientist thickly, his quick mind trying to comprehend how a shinigami could overpower an arrancar so easily. "A…certain deficiency of the soul…"

"How surprising," murmured Aizen Sosuke, and suddenly Apollo could breathe again. "That is not what I was expecting to hear."

The arrancar straightened up and flicked his pure pink hair back; adjusting his glasses. "Due to the dangers of exposing Hollows with great spiritual power to the Hougyoku in its current state, future transformations must be undergone by those at a lower level of evolution, or with a weak capacity. However they are very likely to die of a reiatsu overload in the process."

"These are things I am already aware of," said his master in warning. Stuttering a little, Szayel cut straight to the chase.

"Very rarely, there exist souls with apparently infinite potential. As such they would be capable of absorbing all the strength instilled in them by the Hougyoku without literally bursting due to the pressure."

Moving towards the centre of the empty room, Aizen placed the orb back into its green podium. There was a tiny fracture in its crystal case; he had been gripping it so hard. Taking a deep, soothing breath, the man released it again. It was really not like him to be so open with his emotions.

Back in control of himself, he faced the Espada once again.

"Why do you consider this potential to be a deficiency?"

Szayel folded his arms, a thoughtful look on his face. "It is something I first noticed when my older brother Ilforte Granz began to travel with Grimmjaw Jeagerjacques, long before you appeared in Hueco Mundo, Aizen-sama. The vast majority of living beings have limits, no matter how high they may be." His yellow irises flicked from side to side in recollection. "But when my brother and his friends ceased to grow, with only regression to look forward to, they offered their flesh to Jeagerjacques. And he continued to increase in power. Ever since that realisation, I began to study and research specimens of great latent ability."

The Octava stepped closer to the shinigami, suddenly appearing very excited. "I am not definite on how many there are, nor exactly sure how it comes about; but those for whom the potential is a deficiency are capable of bringing any volume of reiatsu under their control – because they have spent their entire lives subduing their own colossal spirits. It is a defect as they are naturally under risk of a similar explosion to the one that Perro Rabioso suffered with his arrancarification. But if they can survive themselves, they can survive anything. Stark is one, though that doesn't help as his mask is already broken. Barragan might be. Hallibel and Ulquiorra perhaps. Nnoitra is not. Grimmjaw," he raised his palms and tipped from side to side slightly, a pair of scales weighing up a decision… "As he first made me aware of this trait, I am waiting to see if he shows it."

"As you say, a mask cannot be broken twice. Telling me the strength of my own Espada is not particularly constructive." He was not very interested in Szayel Apollo's close inspection of his fellow arrancars, knowing perfectly well that the man's precarious grip on his rank depended entirely upon gathered knowledge and the strategies born thereof. His strength was his intellect. Compared to his peers, his spiritual energy was paltry. It took no great leap of the imagination to see why such a person would investigate the powers of others: in the hopes of duplicating them.

"Another candidate is that guy who recently invaded Hueco Mundo." The entrance had been so obvious that the residents of Las Noches had barely bothered to mention it. If they had intended to go unnoticed then they were desperately naïve.

"Kurosaki Ichigo, yes. But he is already a vaizard. Although, considering this, I wonder if Urahara had another invention similar to the Hougyoku. Only because Rukia was safely in Soul Society before the ryoka gained legitimate shinigami abilities."

"He is a little unusual," noted Szayel, treading carefully in case it came across as praise and angered Aizen-sama. He need not have worried. The other just laughed briefly.

"He always is." The ryoka had bested Zaraki and Byakuya just weeks after attaining his own zanpakuto, virtually captain-level from scratch. If anyone was an example of ridiculous potential, it was him.

"He is not just defected, but also contagious. It is something I have not found before. But from studying their energy signatures, he affected and empowered at least two of his friends before reining in his influence. Including our new…guest." He referred to their technically voluntary hostage, Inoue Orihime.

"Really," stated Aizen in a bored tone. This was nothing new. He had already figured all these things out during the ryoka invasion of Seireitei. It had served to fill the gaps between plotting and deceiving and pandering to that needy kicked-puppy Hinamori.

When the Kurosaki boy had stolen Rukia's shinigami abilities, his reiatsu had been a chaotic mess – torn between two zanpakuto, one dormant and one a stranger – and far too huge for a child to control. It had spilled out and infected those closest to his shinigami form: the ditz and the tall silent one. And eventually Zangetsu had provided a proper channel, after which the speed of progress had been unimaginable. But by then his friends had already exhibited their uncanny and unique abilities, born of a strange trigger rather than training in kido or through the slumbering swords in their souls.

It was simple, really.

"The contagion effect makes me wonder whether we could find a…potentialist similar to him from among those closest to him…" was the younger and now only Granz's final proposal.

The former captain gave this some thought. It was feasible, if one turned it sideways and squinted at it. "Are you suggesting Inoue Orihime or Sado Yasutora?"

Flapping a gloved hand, Szayel dismissed them. "Seeing as you have never permitted me to study the Hougyoku in detail, I cannot predict the outcome of using it on a non-shinigami or non-Hollow. But Barragan would be able to examine other acquaintances of that pest and tell you whether they would be suitable."

"Oh?"

He continued reluctantly, for he disliked revealing just how closely he had studied his arrancar rivals. "His Majesty has a Soul Inspection talent."

"Interesting. I wonder why it is him and not you, my dear Apollo." As frequently was true, Aizen's voice was condescending. The lazy brown eyes hid a challenge.

The Espada fidgeted with his purple spectacles rather than meet that gaze. "All things become clear with time, I guess;" was his cryptic response.

"Indeed," said the shinigami smoothly. Then he smiled, his usual superficially benevolent mood restored. "That's not his only extra skill, either."

Szayel blinked. What had he missed?

**o)0(o**

"Bostov dresses like a _man_," said Yuzu mournfully. "That's _shocking_." She was measuring out the pattern of the pinkest, frilliest dress yet. It was cunningly designed to cure the plush toy of all tomboyish traits, by force if necessary.

Karin flipped the page of her sports manga. "I think he is a man, Yuzu."

"What?"

"Well…for one thing, he has a mane. And he's Karakura _King_. And he always mysteriously vanishes whenever you get out your sewing kit." She was lying on her bed, flat on her back with one leg crossed over the other and foot bobbing in the air. Another page was turned. "I can't believe Suki forgave him for bursting her signed football. Who writes this rubbish?"

Yuzu went from 0 to tearful in three seconds flat. If she was being honest, she would admit that she was a little too frequent with the waterworks; but then again with a twin sister who never cried it was necessary to balance the equation. "Karin-chan…you doubt my womanly intuition?"

"Uh huh. But we should just ask him. He is alive after all."

Hearing this didn't faze the girl at all. If it was indeed Karakura King, then they had already fought side by side as part of Don Kanonji's Rangers. The cheque was in the post to prove it, because the spirit medium's ratings had shot up. Nevertheless she raised her palm to her mouth and stage-whispered an argument.

"But Bostov is _confused_, Karin-chan!"

Her sister started laughing.

**o)0(o**

The sky of Hueco Mundo was low, oppressive, and eternally black. Inoue had not been here long; but she had already realised, staring through the small barred window of her cell, that the crescent moon never changed. She wondered if it had ever waxed or waned, some instinct telling her no.

Chad, Ishida and Kurosaki felt the same way as they navigated the endless desert. The moon was high in the sky, yet did not feel above it. The night was blank, a black veil blocking out the stars. If any existed in this barren dimension.

Sand.

Sand.

Sand.

Tree.

Sand.

Sand.

Sand.

Hollow gecko.

Sand.

Sand.

Sand.

Tree.

Sand.

Sand.

Sa-

"Are we nearly there yet?"

"Kurosaki, you can see as well as I can that we're nowhere near!"

Ichigo sniggered. "Yeah but your glasses are so thick maybe the castle looks closer…" He face-planted into the sand, having been tripped up by an angry Quincy. Coughing and spitting the crunchy granules out of his mouth, he stood back up. Okay. Maybe he had brought that one on himself.

"Look, why don't I just go bankai and flash step there? It would be a hell of a lot faster."

Ishida punched his palm, inspired. "Yes! Reveal our presence to all of Hueco Mundo, waste all your energy before ever seeing an Espada and leave me and Sado-kun behind in the dust! What an _excellent_ recipe for disaster!"

Ichigo threw his hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay, I get it! But can you blame me for being bored? It doesn't even seem like we're moving!"

Chad, the only member if the trio looking at their surroundings, made an astute observation.

"Would a tornado help?"

"What?"

He pointed wordlessly at the hurricane tearing into ground before them.

"AAAGH!"

"RUN!"

**o)0(o**

"Aahhh!" yelped Karin, dropping her comic and covering her eyes. Yuzu jumped at the unexpected noise and snipped straight through Bostov's new frock.

"Karin!" she scolded, holding out the ruined garment in dismay. "What was that for? You jogged me!"

But her sister had rolled onto one side, curling into a foetal position around the sharp pain in her head. She did not answer.

"Karin-chan?" repeated Yuzu, her voice softened by concern. "What's the matter?"

A questing hand reached out and grabbed the nearest pillow, picking it up and cramming it over the girl's black-haired head. "I have a migraine," she whimpered. "And my eyes have gone all jazzy."

"I thought the eye migraines didn't hurt, nee-chan."

Holding back the tears born from the sharp pain in her eye sockets and cranium, Karin reminded herself over and over of her vow never to cry and never to burden her family. "Normally they don't. But when they do...it usually means something is about to happen."

"Like what?"

"Like when Mum...and the night the truck went into our wall when Ichi-nii...or those times with Kanonji when the monster was too big and Ururu had to gun it down."

Yuzu felt a shiver go down her neck. The sentences didn't really need completing. The words were not pleasant to voice. "That's bad, Karin-chan."

The pillow nodded. "But I don't feel any ghosts around. Why would I have a migraine if there weren't?"

She didn't know it, but the answer was simple. The invader was hiding his presence.

In the room down the hallway, a black seam appeared in empty air and began to widen, its edges jagged with angular ripples. A strange bubbling roar emitted from the growing, expanding portal. And without the faintest hint of reiatsu, an Espada stepped through the garganta and into the real world.

Karin began to shake.

"Yuzu-chan, I think you should leave."

"But you're-!"

"Go and fetch Oyaji! Call the neighbours, whatever, just don't stay here!"

"I can't just leave you Karin-chan-"

"YUZU!" shouted her twin, ripping the pillow off her head and throwing it at her sister. "RUN!"

Startled into obedient action, Yuzu leapt to her feet and sprinted out the door and down the stairs. Following suit, albeit far more slowly; Karin lurched along the corridor to her brother's room. The plain badge on the door with its '15' logo shuddered and fell off as she tugged weakly at the door handle. This kind of menace would take more than a football to finish off, she could tell that much. The migraine was the most intense she had ever experienced. And if she was lucky, perhaps she could find a weapon of some sort in her brother's drawers. That gizmo he had used to exit his physical body - would that work on anyone? And if it did would she find herself with black robes and a sword as well?

Karin could only hope it ran in the family, and failing that swear at the universe until it caved in and submitted to her demands. She had to find a way to fight the coming danger.

_She had to protect Yuzu._

She didn't want to imagine life without Yuzu, the way she had had to get used to life without a loving, adorable mother and a supportive, if kind of thick-headed and short tempered older brother. He was gone so much of the time, and she knew the zombie-Ichigo who was a bit of a pansy and pretty rude and really lazy truly was no replacement at all.

But life without Yuzu wouldn't be life any more. It would just be the dregs of a family broken beyond repair. Not just because Yuzu was the domestic centre of the Kurosaki universe...but because she was the innocent one. The one of them that forgave all other bolshie, argumentative and fight-picking members of the family. She made it a home, rather that a fight club with free meals. In her mind, Yuzu was far more indispensable than herself.

She made this building a home and haven rather than a hospital clinic filled with strangers and a small house attached to the side.

Karin must have been absolutely terrified, because all these thoughts flashed through her mind in mere seconds – permeated with an absolute certainty that the approaching Hollow was going to kill somebody.

Of course she didn't want it to be her; but it just could not be Yuzu. It just couldn't.

The door slammed open; she shot into Ichigo's room and started to empty out the desk's faded blue drawers. There was nothing usable there, whether she could have recognised them or not. No spiritual artefacts, no swords, robes, weapons, nothing. Only pens and bits of paper with ugly rabbits and bears drawn on them (Karin ignored her brother's apparent bad taste in art for the moment, preoccupied by a very insistent sense of dread) and the odd strange souvenir, like a ribbon or a duck-headed sweet dispenser.

Karin abruptly stopped searching and just slumped on the bed. She felt frozen, like the increasing pounding of her headache was cutting out her motor skills. If nothing could be done, then it was time to run. Ichigo was long, long gone. Yuzu had hopefully run as fast as her legs could carry her to the town centre or somewhere where the crowds would dissuade attackers - doubtful when the ghosts were so conveniently invisible to most. Their father was out of town on a shopping spree for the clinic with old friends. The only other dependable person she could think of was Tatsuki; who wasn't spiritually aware, as far as she knew.

Or that Toushiro kid, but the chances of him popping up at the perfect moment were waaay less than a million to one.

"Shit," gasped Karin, clutching her throbbing head. "Shit. It's getting closer."

The plain wooden door, not the sort designed to conceal or reveal horrors, opened for a second time. When the frightened child's black eyes looked up at him in terror, the arrancar was surprised. His ability to hide his reiatsu was near enough perfect, as should be expected from one of his great stature. Yet there she was, staring at his weathered tanned skin and bone crown; and trying her hardest to scrabble away over the unmade bed and leap out of the nearest window. Pointless.

Barragan scrutinised the small, frail form of the human. Trash. Utter trash. But he could indeed see the flawed signs that Szayel had instructed him to look for. The rust on the Chain of Fate. The brittle quality of the Soul Sleep. The promising little defects in the soul of this Plus, who was currently so weak as to be a dust mote to his mountain.

It was just as well he had disguised his presence. Even his normal, stationary level of reiatsu would have crushed her.

Striking out with a swift fist, he knocked her away from the window frame and onto the carpeted floor in an instant. The trash wailed and clutched at her head, staggering to her feet again in a futile attempt to dodge around his impeding presence.

"I do not know why that Aizen wants a soul like yours," admitted the demon, his manner disparaging; "but I can at least be thankful I found you straight away. I do not wish to be in this disgusting, thin air any longer than I have to." He raised one of those bruising hands for a second time.

"Ichi-nii! Oyaji! Yuzu!" shrieked the girl, panicking. "Help me! HELP-!"

He cuffed her soul out of her body with a single blow, just to make her shut up.

The small ragdoll corpse split in two, both flying in opposite directions to land in a crumpled heap. Barragan Luisenbarn snarled; this was taking too long. "Stand before me, you maggot. Your new sovereign demands it."

A long, clinking chain spooled out in the gap between spirit and matter. Karin just blinked at it, slipping into shock with the slow sensation of drowning. What was that? Why was it attached to her, and why was her body on the other side of the room, over there? How could she see if her eyes where over there?

"Uh...ah...I...uh..." stuttered the child.

The king of Hueco Mundo pulled her to her feet, drawing his sword. Looming over her timid and petrified soul, he released a whisper of reiatsu, just enough for the purpose.

Out in the street, Yuzu felt it, and started screaming for help at the bewildered passers-by.

Karin had been right.

Death had come.

**o)0(o**

Isshin waved a cheerful hand at his long time friend and long time I'll-put-up-with-him-if-I-have-to acquaintance, as he approached the sunny cafe table from a distance. Urahara looked quite pleased to see him, tipping his hat like one would doff a cap.

Ryuuken just glared.

Unless he was squinting in the bright autumn sunshine. Ishhin hoped that was the case, at least.

"Yo!" he greeted his fellows, waving at them again.

"Just sit down and shut up. I don't want you drawing attention to us. If we three are seen together in public..."

"By who?" interrupted Urahara, and his carefree nature was almost equal to that of Isshin himself. "There are perhaps two people in all the world and only a handful from the afterlife that could derive any scandal from us having an innocent rendezvous."

"I don't care," stated Ryuuken quite clearly; raising his hand to halt Urahara's babbling in the manner of a highly paid consultant who is used to being obeyed. "What concerns me is that my son has once again run off with this idiot's spawn and put himself in danger. Into Hueco Mundo!"

"I know," replied Urahara blithely. "I sent them there."

"And for that I'm going to make you pay the bill." This was no small threat. The cafe they were visiting was extremely expensive, and for that it promised them a private conversation. It would also serve them all the green tea, sake and Red Bull they needed to tolerate each others' company.

"Hai, hai~" chirped the inventor, grocery-store owner and architect of Aizen's apocalypse proudly.

"Uryuu is such a fool," lamented the sewing-fanatic's father, always only too happy to berate his offspring. The others at the table had not even asked how life was going for him before he launched into another complaint. "He thinks he's a genius, and I'll admit he has talent far beyond that of the majority of his forefathers, but his recklessness is atrocious! He lost his powers in the space of three months! What kind of intellect achieves that, may I ask?"

Isshin was inclined to disagree. "I think that our boys are quite heroic. He did take down the bankai of Kurotsuchi, which is an astounding feat for someone who had already been stabbed by that evil little Ashizogi Sushi of his."

"I think you got the name wrong, Kurosaki-kun..." noted the geta-boshi.

"On purpose, yes! But putting that aside, we all know that Ryuuken here is just jealous of my little Ichigo, ha ha ha!"

"What?" The white-haired man downed his small cup of sake. If he did not keep his hands occupied they would soon be clenching Kurosaki's neck.

"Don't try to deny it, you miserable old sod! Ichigo has boasted more power than Zaraki AND Byakuya in a single outing! He kicks your kid's pansy sewing club ass! He's a gem, if he'd just come home at the proper times."

"Your priorities need a little tweaking, my old friend." This jibe came from the wise old mouth of Kisuke. Isshin pouted, trying to look hurt.

"I can schedule you for a lobotomy next month. I'll fast track you," promised Ryuuken, a dangerous edge in his voice.

"The old-fashioned way, with an ice pick and a mallet? No thanks mate."

"I can't believe you would even dare to suggest I was jealous of that brat of yours. The way he flings his reiatsu around is atrocious! He would not be able to master a single kido spell in a thousand years! With the same amount of energy Uryuu would be able to extract powers ten times more efficient!"

"Te-ten times? Isn't that taking it a little far?" spluttered the formerly proud father.

"No..." said Urahara slowly. He picked at his nails, pretending that the dirt caught beneath them was more interesting than Isshin's enraged expression (which he was sure would be hilarious, hence he couldn't look up until he had finished his sentence for fear of bursting into laughter, that not being very sly or subtle). "Actually Kurosaki-kun is still failing to reach his full potential, and I'm not talking about further power-ups. A lot of his energy is wasted, leading him to use more. And those mistakes are only forcing him to draw more power from the seat of his soul." Kisuke looked at Isshin steadily. "I know I do not need to warn you of the dangers inherent in such damaging progress, Kurosaki-kun."

"Says the guy who made my son a vaizard!"

"Did you want him to return home or not? A shinigami cannot sustain a living body."

"Assuming he _can_ come home." Isshin suddenly burst into tears, his energy drink kicking in and exaggerating his emotions. "Our babies have gone out to _die_!"

Ishida sneered, crossing his arms and leaning back in his wicker chair. "Why should we care? They were both too impatient to become _true_ warriors from the start. They don't know their own limits and just burn themselves out."

"Aha!" cheered the head of the Kurosaki family. "I'm a better dad than you! I win the rivalry!"

"I never saw you as worthy of being my rival."

Kisuke just sipped his tea and tried to keep his smiles to a minimum. Failing that, at least to make them appear mocking. He had a reputation to upkeep; it just wouldn't do to show how much he genuinely enjoyed these secret café powwows.

"And I'm only alive because you swore the Hippocratic Oath, blah blah blah," finished Isshin. "Though I wonder how you expected your son to become both strong and prudent by ignoring him."

It hit a deeply buried nerve. "Am I supposed to coddle him, like you?"

"Pshht. I take great pride in beating Ichigo up every morning. It hones his instincts. When he's at home that is; and not off saving damsels, defeating captains, learning bankai – that kind of thing."

"Imbecile," muttered Ishida Senior, returning to his sake.

The ex-captain in the green-striped hat finally chose to speak. "Ishida-san. You coddled your son by not teaching him to be a true Quincy. Did you think the training would break him?"

The alcohol disappeared down the doctor's throat. He led a teetotal lifestyle for the most part. The unfamiliar liquid burned when he swallowed. "I was committed to the hospital and saving lives. His grandfather-"

"Trained him against your wishes," interjected Urahara, cutting him short. "You are too vain, Ishida-san. You keep trying to carry all the histories of the Quincy tribe on your shoulders alone."

Kurosaki joined in, jumping on the bandwagon. "And your deluded Quincy pride! You're _so proud_ to be the last one that you'd rather see your child die than relinquish the title!"

Ishida Ryuuken stood up with violent speed, knocking over Urahara's tea. Boiling water spilled in all directions.

"Allow me to correct you, my dear shinigamis." He was trembling with barely-controlled rage. "I am in fact the only Quincy who does not wilfully ignore the wider consequences of our actions."

It was their turn to fall into a stunned silence.

"The truth is: I wish for our heritage to end completely."

**o)0(o**

**Bloomake!**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

Kon snuck into the girls' room, on a mission to find scissors. Yuzu had stitched an enormous daisy to his mane a week ago and it needed to be removed before it sucked away all of his sanity.

It hadn't been pretty when it happened to Chappy, and hell if this soul candy was going to suffer the same mistakes.

However, as he stealthily advanced upon the sewing box, he caught sight of a manga that had fallen to the floor. It was about football. Ooh.

Minutes later a dark shadow fell over him. As a joyous cry of delight rang out, he realised it had all been a trap.

"Bostov!"

_Curses._

**o)0(o**

Ichigo thought being trapped in a whirlwind of sand was bad enough, but of course Ishida could always be counted on to make such misfortunes even more unbearable.

In the midst of the dizzying, tumbling dust storm, a hand latched onto his arm and the archer yelled something in his ear.

"WHAT?" shouted Ichigo, receiving a mouthful of grit for his troubles. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"PENTAGONAL!" screamed Uryuu again, giving his exasperated friend a thumbs up and a stupid grin before being tossed back into the maelstrom.

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	3. King's Burial

**~o) Hell Butterfly (o~**

**King's Burial**

**~03~**

**o)0(o**

Being trapped in a tornado is a terrible torment. There was sand _everywhere_, in every crease of his clothes and in his eyes, scratching and scraping every available inch of skin. Ichigo was pretty sure that it was his reiatsu-laden skin that saved him. He could easily imagine a weaker victim being torn to shreds.

For the next few giddy, vomit-inducing minutes, he was tossed around like a strawberry in a blender and turned a pretty similar colour – the yellow of seeds when the blood drained out of him in shock, the green of the stalk when he felt sick; red when he was flipped upside down and the blood rushed back until he thought his head would pop. Far too long after the point when he couldn't stand it anymore, a small flying object punched him in the stomach and sent him tumbling out of the windy grasp of the tornado.

He hit the sands with a muted, painful thump.

"Ow."

"Hahah! That din't hurt as much as I thawt it would!"

Huh?

Was that a child's voice he'd heard? He cracked his eyes open and blinked in dazed incomprehension at the green filling his vision. There was something clinging to his head. When he lifted his arms to try and tug it off., he felt little hands knot into his hair and yank it half out. "OW!" he repeated, not as genuinely, but certainly more forcefully than last time. "Let go!"

"Wassat? AH! Nel is stuck to sumfing! AHH GETITOFFGETITOFFGEDDIDORF!"

"You're holding on to _me_, retard!"

The small fists opened instantly and his previously exerted effort flung the creature off him and into the drift of sand opposite. "Hey! Dat's not vewy nice!" squealed his limpet, flailing to and fro in attempt to undig itself from the hill.

Eventually, it tumbled backwards and he saw his adversary properly.

It was a little kid in a green hooded dress.

Ok.

Ichigo shielded his eyes with a hand and peered in the direction of the twister. Just judging by the screams, Ishida was definitely still in there. Chad probably wouldn't scream. Ichigo had been on a rollercoaster with him just once, and instead of screaming the guy had just clamped his hands on the rail, clamped his jaws together and peeled his eyelids waaay back, creating an effective rictus of terror without the faintest peep of a scream.

Ishida, on the other hand, sounded like: "AAAAAHHHH woah woah woah woah woah woah woah woah woah ahhhhhhhhhhhh gah nooooo WOAH!"

Stupid Quincy. Ichigo had hardly shrieked at all. Honest.

Wait a second.

A kid in Hueco Mundo?

Ichigo did a double take at the brat, noting green, lots of green, a red stripe that went over its nose and ended bulbously on each cheek, and very big, very innocent looking taupe-brown eyes.

_What on earth_ was a kid doing in Hueco Mundo? She even had a scar! A massive, wrinkled swathe of scar tissue sweeping from beneath her green fringe down to the bridge of her nose.

Ichigo felt his protective instincts grow incensed. Who the hell had dared bring a kid into this place and do that to her on his watch?

The girl - he was pretty sure - was staring at him, apparently coming to a new realisation as she gawped at his robes, sword and lack of a mask or hollow hole. "You you you you you're not a hollow!" she gibbered, pointing.

"Nah, I'm Kurosaki Ichigo; Shinigami Representative and substitute guardian for Karakura town," he introduced himself. Hopefully she would calm down, now that she knew help had finally come.

She hopped closer, prodding at him with a wavering human finger. "You – you – you're a _shinigami_?"

"Yup!" replied Ichigo, with two thumbs-up and a sad attempt at a good-guy expression. His face was too naturally...furrowed to pull it off, however.

"YOU'RE A BAD GUY!" she wailed morbidly, clutching her head in a tragic pose like the Scream and causing the hood to fall off.

And reveal a deeply cracked skull mask.

Ichigo breathed in sharply; flinched back a little. The child was a Hollow? Children could become Hollows? That was just...tragic...

"You're," repeated the girl, teary eyes huge and gap-toothed mouth aghast. Her hand patted him again, as if making sure the nightmare was real. "YOU'RE IT!" she whooped, slapping his arm and pelting away across the sands back towards the tornado. "DONDOCHAKKAAAA!" she yelled, some kind of mad war cry. "WAIT FOR MEEEEE!"

"Oi..." sighed Ichigo, levering himself upright on the uneven ground. He would try to make sense of this development later. "What's a Dondochakkaaaa?"

Seeing as he too had business with the whirlwind, he started to trot after the little Hollow girl. She turned round slightly, gawked at him and began to sprint. "Don't chase me, evil shinigamiiiii!" she squealed. "I don' wanna be It!"

The screams and the spinning sands drew closer and louder. Ichigo peered at it, intent on finding his friends. "CHAAAAAD! IIIIISHIDAAAA?"

"Yes?" replied the polite, cultured tones of the top student, fittingly from the top of the twister. Ichigo face-faulted as he caught sight of the guy. He looked like he was surfing.

"How are you doing that?" blurted out the redhead, sounding far more impressed than he had intended; which would probably lead to Ishida lording it over him for the next few days.

"Can't you tell, Kurosaki?" shouted back the windsurfer, one hand elegantly pinning his glasses to his face out of the teeth of the gale, the other hand clinging on to Chad's belt. In a second or two his arm was going to give out and it was going to be very painful for the both of them.

"This sandstorm isn't natural! It's powered by reiatsu!" shouted Ishida. "I'm using my famous Quincy 'flying curtain' technique! Because I'm aweso-" his next words were censored by a gob full of sand.

"Ne...Shouldn't that be 'flying carpet'?" asked a sneaky, light voice from below him. He looked down in alarm.

THERE WAS A GIANT WORM. WITH HORNS.

In even more alarm, Ishida accidentally let go of Chad. The long-suffering stoic was whipped away in silence. As suspected.

"I'm pretty sure the phrase is 'flying carpet'!" repeated the voice; far too high in pitch to apply to the ENORMOUS SERPENT that was riding out the weather, too great a mass to be tossed around like the rest of them. "Don't you think, Dondochakka?"

"Sure!" roared another, cheerful voice. If Uryuu squinted he could make out the forms of two smaller, vaguely more humanoid hollows perched up on the helmet of the worm. He could pick out purple, white, and yellow with black polka dots. His fashion senses shrivelled in dismay.

"Ne, flying-kun! Have you seen our sister Nel anywhere? She fell off!"

"If you lost her, why didn't you just stop this whirlwind and go look for her?" screamed back Ishida, not in quite his right mind at that moment. If he had been feeling okay, it would have been whoosh with the bow and zap with the arrows right then and there.

"Oh, we're not making the weather," replied the skinny-sounding one. "We're just stuck in it!"

"Oh yeah! We should be screaming, Pesche, ya know?" gasped its big, jolly…friend?

"Right! Off we go! AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"Woah woah woah!" screamed Dondochakka, or whatever his name was. He made it sound like he was being spun at high speed. In truth, the only person that was happening to was Chad. (Who, incidentally, had just zoomed past on his fifteenth revolution.)

"Bawa bawa bawaaaa!" chimed in the snake.

The hurricane stopped as abruptly as it had started, the powerful winds swerving to a halt and several tonnes of sand dropping to the ground in a great _whoomph!_

Chad crawled out of the heap like a newborn zombie. "Never…again…" he croaked. In his mind the sentence continued: …_not again. I will learn shunpo. I will achieve flight. I will master the arts of channelling the winds. But I will never go through that again._

Externally, there was a long pause until he uttered a simple "No." with finality strumming from every vocal cord.

Meanwhile, Nel was running back into the fond embrace of a skinny purple Hollow in a loincloth, and a giant tiki mask with disproportionate arms and legs. Ishida saw them clearly for the first time and shuddered. Horrific combinations of yellow, purple, green and red between the three of them made the swiftest stitcher and dandiest designer in Karakura wish he had never come.

"Ne, Nel Tu," said the worst offender in a whisper. A whisper that did not know how to do its job properly, as everyone could hear it loud and clear. "Who's that fella following you?"

"Ssshh, Dondochakka! Don' let It hear you!" whisper-shouted Nel back to the oversized mask. "I tagged him, and he could stwike back at any time!"

"Wow," said the purple Hollow with a hint of awe. Something about his tone of voice in general gave the impression he had delusions of intelligence. "That shinigami camouflage must scare away a lot of the weaker Hollows."

Nel's little face broke into a very wide grin – so large it pushed her eyes shut. "He ain't camouflaged."

The motionless masks of her companions managed to trade a worried look. Their blank, empty eye sockets moved from Ichigo, to Ishida, to Chad, to Nel; to Ichigo, to Ishida, to Chad, to Nel – to – Ichigo – to – Ishida – to – Chad – to – Nel – pretty soon their eyes were spinning out of control.

"W-we'll protect you, Nel!" they cried in unison, both leaping to her defence. However, Dondochakka was so giddy he charged off in the opposite direction. Eventually the little Hollow-kid had a solid wall of idiot between the invaders and herself.

"You guys…aren't like normal Hollows at all…" Ichigo had a huge sweatdrop rolling down his left temple and a strange expression.

"Oh yeah!" said Nel in sudden surprise. "We din't introduce ourselfs!"

Ishida wondered if this was a bad thing: Hollows usually only gave their names to those they were about to kill. Or, to be more accurate, arrancars did.

"WE ARE NEL DON PE, DESERT THIEVES!"

"THE THREE SIBLINGS OF DONCHAKNOW!"

"SUPERHADOUKEN TRIO!"

The intrepid invaders of Hueco Mundo could not quite believe their eyes.

"Bawa wa wa waaaa!"

"Oh! Sorry Bawabawa, we didn't meeaan to leave you out…"

"Let's try again!" Again, they struck poses of the ilk usually found in tacky Saturday morning cartoons. Sooner or later the boys would have to admit this was really happening, but they clung to the last shreds of sanity and disbelief whilst they still could.

"NEL DON PE BAWA!" cheered Nel, doing a star jump.

"No no no, I thought we were gonna say siblings, capische?" Tear tracks were streaming out of the mask's eyeholes. Forming a huddle, the four Hollows burst into a heated argument.

The humans started to edge away; they didn't need any more introduction than that. They would even resort to begging to prevent there being further repetitions.

"Frikkin' weird Hollows round here..." muttered Ichigo as he made his escape.

"WAIT!" screamed Nel. "We can't give an intwo like dis! They're wunning away wif the wrong idea!"

"Well, uh, whaddyu suggest, friend?" The following whispers, for once, could not be heard. The 'siblings' nodded unanimously, and turned back to their…missing…audience.

"OIII ITSYGO!" hollered the tiny girl, hands cupped around her mouth. "Get back here, you uke!"

"WHAT?" shrieked the boy, voice hiking in pitch.

"Ok go, go," prompted Nel. They scattered into position, and then cried "TADAA!" with one voice.

"The great Nel Tu-sama-chan, amazing awwancar of Hueco Mundo!" She pointed frantically at her undisguised human features and the fissure in her skullcap.

"And Pesche Guatiche, super fly masked guy!" He raised the flap of fabric over his right eye dramatically, though they were all too far away to see the significance of this gesture.

"And DONDOCHAKKA BILSTAN! DONCHAKNOW!""

"BAWABAWAAAA!"

The humans just stared, once again falling into a stunned silence at the horrific introduction.

"Guys, we're in Hueco Mundo. Is this some kinda joke to you or what?"

"MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY," thundered a voice as large as the tornado of not ten minutes ago. The newly revealed arrancars screamed as a shadow fell over all seven of the assembled.

"Lunuganga is back! Aghhh!"

"It's the guardian of the white sands!"

"We're gonna get owned!"

A living mountain was drawing itself up out of the sand, slowly forming a glaring white mask beneath the battlemented peaks of its head. It was not the usual skull-shaped visor, rather a humanoid face with glaring eyes and a moustache that formed a complete ring around the back of its cranium. A vast fist hovered above them.

"I HEARD NEWS FROM LAS NOCHES THAT THERE WERE INVADERS."

"Yeah, what of it?" muttered Ichigo rebelliously. Maybe he should just get 'ryoka' tattooed across his forehead.

Belatedly he realised this had been said out loud.

"Ohh, or Kurosaki, I could make you a t-shirt that says 'Ryoka without a Cause'."

"But I do have a cause! I'm saving Inoue-san!" The grainy guardian above them roared, displeased at being ignored.

"It's going to be beautiful," sighed Ishida. "A subtle blend of reds and golds to match your hideous hair, and none of those clashing purple tops you wear, no sir."

Chad grunted. "I feel sorry for Inoue."

Ichigo took serious note of this and grimly hefted Zangetsu in one hand. "Right. Let's stop stalling and playing with these kids. Time to rescue Inoue!"

"My god, you have such a hero complex, Kurosaki!" retorted Ishida, snapping out of his tailoring trance. He summoned his spirit bow, and paused. Wait a second. It was _oct_agonal…

**BOOM!** Getsuga Tensho ripped a chunk out of the towering sandman Lunuganga, and a vast blue crescent sped away into the black sky.

The Hollow began to collapse. Ichigo turned away smugly. "Yosh!"

Guatiche sniggered. "That's never gonna work, evil shinigami."

"Why not? His head's in half. Look."

They looked. There was no damage in the slightest. Ichigo pointed with his massive zanpakuto in disbelief, gibbering. "Wh-wh-what the hell is going on? How did he-?"

"He's made of sand, didn'tchaknow."

"WHAT CHEATING SCUM," rumbled the colossus, leaning forwards and lifting its arms. "YOU HAVE NO MANNERS IN BATTLE."

"Baaaaad guuuuuy!" jeered Nel from behind them.

"I WILL TEACH YOU TO SUBMIT TO THE SANDS OF THIS LAND."

"It was a fair shot!" insisted Ichigo; firing again with the black blade.

Lunuganga's fist left a sizeable crater in the ground where Ichigo had just been standing. "Shit!" yelped the boy, grabbing Nel from reflex and shunpo-ing away. But the ground was slipping away, sucking at his feet as he tried to escape. The plains had turned into a desert of sinking sand. Several metres away the earth was draining down into a vast pit, one that was expanding far too fast.

"We're gonna get _puréed_." purred Nel, almost as if she enjoyed the prospect.

Ichigo skidded and the moving sands swallowed him all the way up to the waist. He could barely move his legs to escape, the grip was so heavy. "There is something seriously wrong with you, kid."

"I'm a masochist," she informed him, smiling proudly. "Pain is my home slice."

**o)0(o**

Karin was kneeling before the arrancar king, like a subject who had been brought before him for punishment. Her legs and arms were leaden, her head tipped back just enough to see a small prophecy of what was about to pass in the bedroom of her absent brother. A katana had been unsheathed, the metal dull for the light feared to touch it.

Where was Ichigo now?

Where was the shinigami with the overflowing power to overcome all obstacles and threats?

Where was the One Guardian, the Ichi-Go, when she needed him?

The crowned man, monster, had placed one foot upon her still and lifeless body, holding the reddish ferrous chain that linked them in his empty hand. She could feel electric charges stream out of his palm and zap along the chain into her heart. It stung enough to bring tears to her eyes, even in her numb state of shock.

Now he was leaning down on his leg, pinning her physical corpus to the floor as his fist wrenched the chain from its core. The toppled hostage of Karin's real body grew an ashen grey colour, twitching and seizing up before losing all tension with a sigh akin to a death rattle.

Heart-attack. Recognised some part of Karin's brain. I'm dead. I didn't know dying was like this.

You step out of your body before you feel the pain?

Pain, travelling up a fast-eroding Chain of Fate, hit her hard. She nearly bit the tip of her tongue off; shrieking in a voice none among the living could hear. Of rescue there was no sign.

"I-I-Ichi-niii..." she groaned, gasping for breath in the thin air of the spirit side, aware on some level that only he could counter this assault. Yuzu and Oyaji couldn't see ghosts.

Oh, but she wished her doctor-father was here now to take the hurt away, and she wished Yuzu could be there now to hug her and help her forget the things she had seen and felt...

"Don't die so hastily, larva. Aizen-sama would be displeased."

Barragan, the royal, empty man, stood over her with a curled lip and cruel granite eyes. "I am going to knight you, in a fashion," he snorted distastefully at the concept, but orders must.

"Yuzu..." bleated the tiny, twelve-year-old girl at the feet of the thousand-year King.

"I dub thee," stated Barragan slowly, and with grandeur..."in the name of Barragan Luisenbarn, King of Hueco Mundo," he raised his zanpakuto, though to her shivering confusion the blade was positioned hilt first. "Under the authority of the Dark Konsou, by the desecrating touch of the King's Burial..."

The pommel glowed with a black and endless illuminance, etched out were characters that gave away the purpose of the ritual.

**Death Unrisen**

"Hollow," he intoned, smashing the sword into the centre of her forehead.

There was no blood.

Only burning black kanji upon the pale paper of her skin.

"And thus the blade falls for a second time, under the name of a mask."

No visible blade moved, yet she felt her heart cleave away from her soul and hide itself someplace where she could not follow. As the dark symbols smouldered and sank deep into her skull, she felt overwhelming loneliness well up out of the void they left behind.

"No no no…" mumbled the lips of the delirious child, the last words she would ever speak as her mind and brain were eaten away by the devil's soul burial; as she turned involuntarily into something that was not herself, and yet was her…

"No…no…I don't believe in…no don't…I don'tbelieveinghosts…"

Karin flopped forwards; soul as pale as the corpse in which her blood had stilled, surprised at the sudden halt of her heart. Catching herself automatically on limp arms, she fell backwards again into stabbing rays of shadow matter. The ground cracked open to consume her slight form.

All reality vanishing, she tumbled lifelessly into a black, pathless nowhere that slithered betwixt other stranger dimensions.

He watched the maggot sink through the floor into a mysterious place that only the unconscious soul could tread, dark shafts of non-light flickering around the surreally normal room. There was slight curiosity in his small, aged eyes. A konsou had never before been performed by Hollows, and as far as he knew he was the only one among the arrancars to boast the ability.

It made the theft and corruption of pluses almost…legitimate.

Out in the calm, midday street, Yuzu felt her twin vanish; and crumpled.

**o)0(o**

The coffee cup slipped from his nerveless fingers, spilling searing brown liquid down his Hawaiian shirt; Isshin's latest hyperactivity-inducing drink shattering on the pavement into fifty jagged fragments. He had been hit by a sour instinct.

For a moment stunned, he leaned down to pick up the pieces and slit his thumb on a razor ceramic edge. The sting of the cut brought him back to his senses.

"I have to get home," he said hoarsely, bolting out of his seat and sprinting away down the road, the café quickly left far, far behind him. Belatedly feeling the faint, vulgar reiatsu in the direction of the Kurosaki residence, Ryuuken took off in hot pursuit of his one-time colleague.

"My, my…" hummed Urahara to himself, sipping his hot cup of cha with the cold realisation that they were already too late. The spiritual presence was barely there, and only masterful disguise of aura could explain the Espada-strength nausea induced by something so weak. Yet he did not panic, nor make any attempt to move to the rescue of his old friend's children. Hundreds of years' service in the Gotei 13 had taught him to cut his losses and move on without hesitation.

But then again, if he was there…maybe they wouldn't be too late.

Pulling a custom Soul Candy dispenser out of his haori (it had a cute black kitten face on top), Kisuke popped a pill and burst out of his body with the café staff none the wiser.

"Pay the bill, would you? Oh! And buy us some muffins for later. Ja ne…" chirped the shinigami to the faux soul, disappearing from view in a single flash step.

**o)0(o**

"AAAGH! WE'RE GONNA GET MASTURBATED!" screamed the tiny green-haired arrancar.

"Don't you mean masticated?" asked Pesche, shouting to be heard over the tidal roar of the quicksand.

There was a brief, un-forecasted blizzard. Lunuganga froze, and more importantly, so did the deadly downwards slide of his antlion's trap. The Hollows cheered wildly. The humans just scrambled to get away from the danger zone.

Rukia watched Ichigo approach with an uncharacteristically happy look on his face. Was that aimed at her? For saving him from the big nasty hollow? Or was it just that he was pleased to see an ally. The reason didn't matter. Because no matter what, as soon as he came within striking distance she was going to -

_WHAM_

The heel of her palm connected with his chin, snapping his head back and making him give a cry of pain.

"OW!" he yelled. "What was that for?" Backing away, he rubbed his new bruise. That had _hurt_.

In reply, Rukia merely tagged Renji with a simple high-five. The tall man gleefully stepped forwards and introduced his own fist to the strawberry's stomach.

"Hwerk!" choked Ichigo, folding in half. "I don't get it..."

"Are you stupid?" snapped Rukia, shouting in her angry-tirade-voice that she had been born with but polished to perfection in the haughty Kuchiki household. "Why did you leave without us? Why didn't you wait for us to come back? If you knew us at all you should have realised we would find a way to come and help Inoue. Do you really think you are the only person here who owes her a rescue?"

"Sorry," apologised Ichigo, now tending to two bruises. "You'd been called back by the Soutaicho, and seeing as both of you have always seemed pretty obedient to the old guy - up to and including your own execution, Rukia - I figured you wouldn't be back any time soon. What did he say? 'This is a time of war, ryoka, we cannot waste resources!' or something..."

"He doesn't call you ryoka anymore," chided Rukia, to which the carrot-top just shrugged. "And to give a living teenager the soul reaping powers of a...somewhat older...graduated shinigami _is_ illegal. In fact the only injustice of that execution was the method."

"Whatever..." sighed Ichigo. He didn't seem sufficiently chastised, so Renji tagged Rukia again, and she walloped Ichigo, again.

"Next time, have a little faith in us, and never force me to say something so pathetic-sounding again!"

Wincing, the Kurosaki boy nodded his full agreement and backed out of range. "Ok, ok..." He tried to look pitiful.

"Now who are these weirdoes - mmmph!" The two shinigami had been gagged in 0.2 seconds. "Don't ask for their names!" insisted Ishida in a terrified hiss. "Or they'll really tell you!"

"But," Renji spat out Chad's hand with a grimace; "why are you hanging out with Hollows?"

Nel heard him and jumped up and down excitedly. "We gonna lead you guys to Las Noches!"

"We didn't even tell you we were going there..." said Ichigo, accusing.

"Well there's nowhere else round here worth seeing."

Rukia frowned. "Point. But then why do we need you as a guide? We can see where it is from here."

"Aha," said the child quickly, "but d'you know where the doors are? Plus Bawabawa is reeeally fast at twavelling through sand."

The invaders brightened up a little. A free ride sounded extremely tempting right about now. Above and behind them, the vast iceberg formally known as Lunuganga began to crumble and subside back into the dunes.

"Nice cape, Kuchiki..." noted Ishida, twitching his glasses so that they flashed spookily. It was a talent that had to be worked at to fully perfect.

Rukia looked up at his admiring tone. "Ah, yes...um...Nii-sama gave it to me," she admitted, blushing slightly at the rare attention from her stoic brother. "He said it would protect from the sand and desert winds."

EHHH?

Their faces were pictures. She only wished her Soul Cell Phone had a camera attachment.

"Woah," said Ichigo in a disbelieving tone, some seconds later. "Your brother's really mellowed."

"He gave one to Renji too, but was far more begrudging."

"Maybe he didn't want to encourage his fukutaicho to leave at such an important time," said the spiky-haired redhead defensively.

Rukia's reply was arch and cutting. "Then you should be a little more concerned about abandoning your responsibilities, ne Renji?" She broke into a cruel laugh as he sank into a deep depression.

"I can't win...I can never win..." he sobbed. They clucked their tongues at him sympathetically, holding back grins.

"SO!" shouted Nel, feeling the centre of attention had not been her for long enough. "Let's get goin-AAAHHHHhhhhhhh..."

The ground had vanished. In moments, too few to react, the entire group were plummeting into a deep underworld beneath the dunes, as the sand poured away like the timekeeping of a giant's hourglass.

The Hueco Mundo desert returned to its former pristine, empty state. Rising up, the Guardian of the White Sands let loose a mocking laugh. "LEARN YOUR PLACE," roared Lunuganga, although his victims were gone. "TRASH CAN NOT RESIDE UNDER THIS SKY, AND LUNUGANGA IS IMMORTAL!"

**o)0(o**

Lunuganga may have been immortal, but Kurosaki Karin was not. Kurosaki Karin was mortal, and her end had already visited her.

Isshin did not know whether her death had been premature, or whether this was fate. He only knew that he had not been at home during this dangerous time. He was perhaps one of a mere handful who knew that there was a spiritual war raging on the other side of existence, beyond the barrier of the air.

Why had he not thought?

Why had he underestimated…war?

Why had Karin been alone when she needed him?

Picking up Yuzu, who seemed to have shrunk back to the baby he had held on her first day of independent life; and holding her tight…was all he could do now. Bury her face in her father's chest. Shield her eyes from that which they had already seen and had cauterised into her memory.

He didn't allow himself the same safety in the darkness behind closed eyelids. He stared down at his dead daughter, clinging to the only child left within his reach; the tears caught too unawares to know they should have been streaming down his face in a Niagara Falls of grief.

He'd seen this before. Oh, yes, he had seen this many times before; be it strangers in the clinic or close friends and comrades in the long-abandoned past. Most of them older, but some just as young. Just as small and defenceless.

He thought he had known anguish, but oh, nothing had carved his insides out and left him this empty since Masaki…

Masaki…

Since Masaki was murdered by the Grand Fisher…

Yuzu shuddered inside the numb circle of his arms. He did not want to imagine how much worse this might be for her, with her innocence and unguarded emotions.

_Without her twin._

A twin, even fraternal, being one of the closest relationships birth could offer…if the twins born chose to behave that way. And for all their differences of opinion and personality, Karin and Yuzu really had been that close.

No matter what thoughts entered and spun uselessly round inside Isshin's head, nothing distracted from the most heart-rending truth.

Exactly the same.

Just as Masaki had died.

A Hollow, Arrancar, Espada; whichever. The name did not matter. All that mattered was that a Hollow had entered this house, the only civilian house in Karakura that contained two captain-level shinigamis; and for the second time, taken away a beloved family member; leaving them cold, limp, ashen, blue, stone dead and growing stiffer on the floor.

Karin…

Masaki…

There would be no summons to Soul Society for either of them.

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	4. Potential for Disaster

**~o) Hell Butterfly (o~**

**Potential for Disaster**

**~04~**

**o)0(o**

Inoue perched on a sofa that was only slightly too hard, wrapping her tense and fidgeting arms around the dress that was only slightly too tight; and the air just a chilly breath below skin temperature surrounded her unmovingly.

Hueco Mundo is an empty place.

No wind. No sun. No stars. No daylight. No life. No plants. No people. No hearts.

Empty.

Hollow.

And these days it felt like her living blood was burning in her veins.

Why wasn't she as cold, numb, as bland as everything else in this place?

The taste of despair and hopelessness was pervasive yet stale. The regret was there, but the Hollows had no reasoning with which to feel it. It clouded the air, unable to reach inside the cores of those that generated it.

Inoue sighed as quietly as she could, and scrubbed her face with her palms. The constant tension was exhausting. She knew she was lucky, fortunate beyond belief to be left alone. Trapped in this place of privacy, rarely or never requested to perform a healing by Aizen, and never experimented on by the greedy-eyed Octava. It was crazy. The food they forced down her throat was often far better than the mangled concoctions she lived on when left to her own devices. And it barely seemed like she was hostage in the stronghold of the enemy at all…

Until she drew attention.

Certain that their patience could end any day now, she stayed quiet and obedient - "I will only serve Aizen-sama," - oh how disgusting. Scared that a cough or a hum might trigger their attacks.

And holding her tongue took a lot of concentration, because her mind wandered all the time, and she had been in the habit of filling her lonely apartment with sound when she was alone.

Whilst Inoue sat, and fretted, and feared; the rest of her mind followed random tangents aimlessly. Sometimes resulting in a jerk of the leg or body as she imagined walking into a pit, a snatch of song whenever she forgot herself, and the panicked pounding of her heart every time she began to drift asleep. As if her body was warning her away from dying during unguarded slumber.

Apart from healing Grimmjaw she had been given no tasks at all, bar aiding a few of the very minor Fraccion to rebuild the demolished areas of Las Noches. Since her kidnapping, Inoue had been largely ignored. At first terrified of being turned into another arrancar, she had waited hour after hour to be called to her doom. But eventually it had become clear that the enemy's interests were not in her personally.

The moment she had felt Ichigo's turbulent reiatsu enter Hueco Mundo, far off but never feeble, she had begun to punch herself at her own stupidity. Of course Ichigo would come after her. _Of course_ her friends would never abandon her to the Hollows, just as she had never refused to join them when the going got tough.

_Of course it was all a diversion_.

How could she not have realised? Was she that retarded? Yes, when an Espada had trapped her in the rift between dimensions, and dangled the lives of all her friends in front of her for the simple price of her obedience…yes, she had tried to do what was right. But even then she should have realised…what was so _obvious_ now.

Yet, and she clenched her fist and jaws bitterly; after weeks of being prohibited from fighting and forbidden to contribute, after so much time being the only person ignored and full of self-derision for being so weak…

'_Follow me, woman.' And unspoken: Aizen-sama wants to study your powers. And barely thought: your powers are special._

_And subconsciously: you are special._

Orihime was disgusted at her own vanity, despite knowing perfectly well that she had acted to save her friends. The thought had come later, whilst she was shadowing her friends and saying her goodbyes, and being utterly too pathetic to kiss Kurosaki-kun without his permission.

_I'm not weak, I'm special._

_Not forbidden to fight, just being protected._

_To go to this trouble, Aizen must think my rejection abilities can swing the war._

If that had been true, she would have been better off committing suicide in that senkai tunnel. Seppuku!

Though she didn't have a sword for the disembowelment or a second to put her out of her misery after. Perhaps Tsubaki would have done it, in two swoops. He always seemed quite keen to beat her up.

Now she imagined the tiny fairy toting huge boxing gloves and looming over her. She'd need to be even smaller for that to work, so she mentally screamed "_eeeee!_" in a high-pitched voice. In fact, the rest of the Shun Shun Rikka might take pity and stop the fight…at normal-human-size that would shock quite a few people…

Bugger.

She had got distracted again.

Maybe she should just commit seppuku now.

Inoue cringed at the thought, raising her fist for another punch. A steel vice closed around her wrist and she jerked round to stare at the maudlin features of Ulquiorra in horror.

_I didn't hear him come in at all…_

"You are required to eat. Do so."

Ah but if she ate then the food would go all over the floor when she did seppuku. Plus Ulquiorra probably wouldn't agree to be her second; he only ever came in to check she was still alive. Beheading her would be counter-efficient.

"Who makes this food?" she asked suddenly, forgetting to cower in the Espada's presence as her mind ran away with itself again. _And where did all the fancy cutlery come from?_ Even for her, it was difficult to imagine Aizen doing house shopping.

The white-skinned arrancar released her wrist and paused, wondering why she had asked.

"…Tousen."

**o)0(o**

"I'm grateful that there wasn't just more sand, but what the hell is this place?" asked Ichigo, breaking the silence after their unexpected drop to a gloomy forest floor. Looking up from his spread-eagled position on the ground, he could faintly see a patch of light that marked the place they had fallen through the sand. As the light slowly grew dimmer, he realised that Lunuganga must be closing the funnel again.

"What is holding the sand up?" added Ishida. "Were all those stunted bushes we saw actually the tips of these trees?"

And vaster trees had he never seen. The girth of some of them was great enough to dwarf even Bawabawa, making the enormous Hollow look like a common garden slug in comparison.

Speaking of Bawabawa, he was trying to climb one of those very same trees. The arrancar trio were clinging to his mask, cheering him onwards.

"Running away, ey…" muttered Chad, peering up at them through his mop-like fringe. Ichigo was somewhat more vocal.

"HEYY! WHY ARE YOU LEAVING WITHOUT US?" he bellowed, voice carrying far and wide, echoing off the distant trees and distorting in strange ways.

"Baka!" wailed Nel in reply. "This is the Menos no Mori…the entire fowest is crawling with Menos Grande! Go away, don't draw attenshun to us!"

Ishida backed up against the tree, absently noticing its cold, quartz-like surface whilst focusing on the ink-black gaps between the immense hoar-frosted trunks. The crystallised bark gave off a faint natural glow, yet not enough to see into the far-off shadows.

Was that a suggestion of white?

Stretching out his right arm, Uryuu allowed the talisman on his wrist to swing freely. Leeching power from the spirit particle-saturated air, he channelled it into the form of a spirit bow.

_Crawling indeed._ Drawn by Kurosaki's shouting, the forest was beginning to swarm with Hollows. Isolated at first, Lunuganga's victims were soon surrounded on all sides by Hollows of every shape and size. It was no wonder now that the guardian of the sands had not bothered to kill them himself – with a death trap like this, there was no need. The shrieks and growls of mindless, malformed monsters that were once men filled the air. When they came too close and Bawabawa had still not burrowed an escape route through the desert suspended above their heads, Uryuu opened fire.

The first volley of dense spirit arrows took out a huge swathe of the crowding Hollows; yet failing to make a dent in the overall number.

It was the worst situation they could have been in, and they'd been there plenty of times before. Hundreds of Hollows poised to attack, lurking just out of sight and multiplying by the second. It was probably Kurosaki's fault as usual, the way he just attracted them with his ridiculous mass of reiatsu. Ishida just kept firing and firing, mowing down the enemy with Kurosaki firing vast claws of energy and Chad shooting out giant laser beams beside him. But it made no difference.

The enemy was legion.

And every blast of reiatsu made more arrive in the hopes of scavenging some human souls.

"Ahh – stop it stop it, you'll just make more of them come heeere!" wept Nel, Dondochakka and Pesche. "You BAKAS."

"What do you want us to do exactly? Lie down and play dead?"

"Well…yeah...but...okay I see what you mean. But this is pointless!"

The attack just got heavier and heavier. As some hollows began to break through the relatively small defences, Ishida had to switch to targeting the more agile flying enemies. It was tough going, and they would likely be exhausted in as little as half an hour.

A hollow that had lost a limb but not its wings careened into Ichigo; he tossed it aside with an angry slice of Zangetsu and flicked at the bizarre fluids it had dripped on him. It didn't seem to be acid or anything so corrosive.

"What were you trying to do? Bleed on me?" he demanded as it evaporated.

"This isn't working," gasped Chad, beginning to tire. His powers had felt a little unstable since entering Hueco Mundo, whether due to the different quality of the dimension he didn't know, but it felt like every time he made a shot he had to pull his punches to prevent a wild explosion. It was irritating, and difficult to work around in the current onslaught.

Having failed to dig their way out in the tightly knitted canopy of the shining crystal trees, Nel and crew returned sullenly down the trunk to the shadowy root layer of the forest. "Ob course it won' work," sobbed the girl. She had burst into tears, as Dondochakka and Pesche clung on to her in a sad attempt to comfort. "The cannibals are gonna come soon and then we're all doooomed!"

"You've attracted every Hollow for five miles around at least," scolded Pesche, patting Nel's skull-mask in a there - there fashion.

"We've been in situations like this before," recalled Ishida. Their continued survival made that a calming thought, he hoped.

"Oh what, like when your stupid bait went horribly wrong? Yeah, that was a barrel of laughs, NOT!" Ichigo sent three Getsuga Tensho in quick succession, blasting a patch of Hollows into smithereens.

"I think the current turnout proves that it was your ooooozing reiatsu and not my bait that attracted them, Kurosaki!"

"I told you not to call it oozing! That's just gross!"

"If we kill Itsygo, would they go away?" asked Dondochakka carefully, having picked up Nel's lisped version of the shingami boy's name. The arrancars huddled, debating this whilst battle raged below them. Bawabawa had paused in their descent; the tree trunk seemed safer…

"We can't kill Itsygo!" gasped Nel. "Look he's trying to save us!"

Pesche nodded gravely. "Ye-es, Dondochakkka, if you noticed, we haven't had to kill any Hollows at all yet. The humans aren't letting them get past to us."

"To prevent sneak attacks from behind," thought Ishida.

"I don't expect you _can_ fight." mused Chad.

"You're welcome to help, anytime, guys!" shouted Ichigo, more than a little pissed off and unnerved by the sheer number of Hollows. This was much closer to what he'd expected to see in Hueco Mundo though. The serene desert had been a façade after all.

"Oh no, there's nothing we can do, and Nel's a baby," sighed Pesche, flapping a hand lazily and pooh-poohing the idea. Bawabawa resumed inching down the enormous tree, sensing approaching danger.

A ruby juggernaut tore a chunk out of the trunk above them, severing stump from canopy, and leaving the burnt quartz sizzling. Woven eternally with the other trees in the vast network of branches, nothing actually fell down; merely remaining suspended in midair, a tree the size of three radio towers. And somehow, that made it creepier.

As one, they all lowered their weapons and stared mutely at the Gillians looming out of the dark.

"Well, I've killed one of them before...easily...chased it away at least." Ichigo had gone quite pale. He was again remembering the time when Ishida's Hollow bait had worked altogether too well and summoned a Menos Grande.

"And remember the time with the weird Sojiro dude and Hitsugaya-taicho," added Renji. "We killed loads of them then."

"Yeah, sure, a few Gillian is no trouble at all." Ishida was sweating.

Chad winced, squinting into the depths of the quartzwood. "There's more than just a few..."

"Their noses look like flutes, and they've got funny boots and spiky necks..." noted Nel, being less than helpful in this time of doom. She spoke as though she'd never seen them before. "I never did get Gillians..."

Countless numbers of the so-called foot soldiers were marching towards them, red spheres of death charging at their open-jawed teeth, eyes blank and staring. The minor Hollows scattered before them, vanishing out of range of the oncoming carnage.

"Now would be a good time to flash-run away?" suggested Ichigo, a terrified smile on his face as he just sheathed Zangetsu, knowing attack now would be futile. Dondochakka shook his oversized head sadly.

"No, you'd just get caught by adjuchas…" he said, tears streaming down his festively coloured face.

Tiny pinpricks of crimson light were the only colour in the barren, monotone and now deserted Menos no Mori. Gradually swelling, the orbs were almost ready to fire as the Gillians stooped as one being to aim at the specks on the ground that had unwittingly drawn their attention.

Ichigo leapt up to Bawabawa's helmet, planning to grab hold of their guides and flee as fast as he could. Ishida was already slinging Chad's non-armoured arm over his shoulder in preparation to do the same.

As the scarlet lights grew large enough to dye the landscape red, Nel threw her tiny hands wide and let loose a piercing scream. Ichigo took a fistful of her green robe and made as if to run, no time now to grab the others.

"STOOOOOOOP!"

One by one the baleful lights flickered out inexplicably, except for one Gillian that had gone past the point of no return and discharged its Cero. It struck a nest of hiding Hollows to the left of the invaders' tree and vaporised them.

And yet the true targets remained untouched, gaping in disbelief at their survival.

Into the silence, Renji spoke.

"Where's Rukia?"

**o)0(o**

Yuzu huddled close behind her father's leg, but not too close. She shadowed him everywhere without getting in his way, assisting him with the clinic work as she often had before, but no longer leaving the room when the tasks grew too squeamish. She passed needles, bandages, antiseptic swaps and medical thread; held sick buckets and patted backs, fetched drinks and food and pillows and occasionally heavy tomes of medicine when Isshin needed to refresh his memory.

All the time, Karin was in _that room._

The small, clean, private room with the locked door.

For those they couldn't save in time.

A coroner would be coming soon. But Yuzu doubted he would believe her about the ghosts. There was a dark bruise on her sister's cold forehead, and another just above her heart.

Yuzu couldn't have been more thankful that their father had been away now. Because if he had come under suspicion of hitting his daughter, what would they have done?

Yuzu hadn't seen the monster, but she had felt its presence. And when she had chokingly tried to explain to her daddy, he had trusted her and nodded and held her tightly.

"Yes…I know about the monsters, Yuzu. With all my brave, brave kids running off to fight them every five minutes, do you think I wouldn't notice? Shhhh, don't worry, I believe you. Daddy has always believed in ghosts, even if he couldn't see them. I know some ghosts are cruel and violent, just like some people are. I'm so sorry I wasn't here to save her, Yuzu..."

Yuzu shook her head quickly, clutching at his too-bright and too-cheerful shirt. "Otou-chan, you couldn't have done anything...like me...and, and, she'll be in heaven now anyway, right?"

Isshin bit his lip hard to keep from having a breakdown in front of his little one, who needed him to be strong now, just like she was being strong for him. But...

He couldn't tell her...it would be soul-destroying...

He could have helped Karin.

And she certainly had not gone to heaven.

Yuzu felt him tense up and decided not to lie. "I keep dreaming...I keep trying to have naps and sleep until today is over and...I always dream that Karin-chan is somewhere dark and empty. I've been able to tell where she was before now but...oh please, tell me I'm wrong, _please…_!"

The sorrow of just the two of them was not all that had to be contended with.

There were some simple facts of life, like the cleaning up that has to be done after a body has died, and scrubbing carpets, and laying a soft white cloth over _her_ face that should not have been there. Isshin had washed his daughter's body as was customary, but he had to leave certain parts undone - the hands, the head, the torso, - anything bruised and anything that might have clawed at an attacker.

The coroner was coming soon.

Until then they had to cope with informing the neighbourhood, ringing up and explaining to the school that the third Kurosaki would not be attending that Monday, ringing police and insurance companies and governmental registrars.

Telling everyone who needed to know. There were no cousins or grandparents to inform, and for the first time Yuzu wondered why.

But the worst part was the neighbours. Those who hadn't known them personally, that the Kurosakis were loud and argumentative and play fighting and almost a broken home with cracks barely visible, torn in the absence of the mother, but forever good-natured.

The ones that didn't know them, and pointed fingers, and gossiped quietly and snidely about the bolshie father, the rebellious son, the tomboy daughter, and only one of them normal, and she driven like a slave with the running of the house. They gathered and clucked about children living in a drugstore and clinic, abuse of medicines, shrewdly asking the whereabouts of the Yankee ginger boy, and damning Isshin for being so free with his children's upbringing.

It was horrible.

But somehow the condolences hurt more.

There was a short ring of the doorbell, and Yuzu ran to open it. It revealed a suit, and a large steel briefcase.

"Are you one of the family?" asked the coroner, and she mutely nodded, knowing why he had come.

"Otou-san is working in the clinic and Karin is in the quiet room." She led the way, trying to calm the trembling in her body that would soon turn into shaking and racking sobs. She didn't want that to happen yet. She was hoping that if she could hold it in for long enough she would never have to say goodbye to her twin.

Karin had never cried.

"Otou-san! The coroner is here..." she called softly. Her father's state was a little worrying. Every now and then he would have to stop and take a break from the stitches he was putting into an old man's arm, because his fingers were so unsteady. But the work needed to be done.

Isshin gave a heavy sigh, like the mournful cries of an ocean wind, and handed over to his assistant. The nurse had been called in from a temp agency to deal with patients that had only the Kurosaki clinic to go to, and no way of knowing they were queuing at a mortuary now.

Isshin lead the stern-looking man into the 'quiet room', pulling the key from the ring on his belt and unlocking the door with slow movements. Setting his suitcase down on the small side table, the man clicked the locks.

"I'm afraid that the examination will need to be carried out here. Due to recent events, such as the citywide gas leak, the city mortuaries are full. Obviously we were unprepared for a spontaneous mass death…"

"Some people are saying that was a terrorist attack," noted Isshin. "An airborne bio-weapon that decomposed very quickly. Mind you, others have blamed it on that meteorite strike." He spoke of the tragic day when an Espada had come hunting for his son, and its friend had swallowed the souls of many innocent people using a technique called gonzui. He hoped that ability was limited to Yammy. It was an ability of mass destruction. And there was no way for the wider world to explain it.

"Well, until we learn the truth, people will tell themselves anything. To begin with, I need to ask you some questions on your daughter's medical history, and I'm afraid that your other child – Yuzu? – will need to remain in the room as she is a witness."

"...okay..." whispered Yuzu quietly.

"I heard there was a brother?"

"He's on a road trip of some sort," said Isshin quickly.

"And Yuzu, was there any suggestion of an attacker in the house whilst you were out on the street?"

"…No..."

"So..." The investigator pulled out a clipboard and pen, and sat down on one of the plain wooden chairs that furnished the sparse room. "The medical history: is there anything that could have triggered Karin's death, such as a pre-existing condition?"

"She was prone to migraines." Isshin placed his hand on a shallow pile of papers also on the table. "These are the records of everything she took for it and any of the migraine attacks she informed me of, but she wasn't the type to take medicine. All my children tend to forget to take aspirins and things, funnily enough, because they don't wish to form a dependence and be tempted by the clinic's stock."

"They're clever kids," noted the Coroner.

Isshin quirked a smile. "The best."

He carried on. "Karin was prescribed some powders for a brief time by a GP at the main hospital, but she'd been off them for a while. The migraines would vary in intensity, from painless eye migraines to head-splitting, hallucinatory...she occasionally would ramble on about ghosts and the like." This was a testing statement. In his experiences, some coroners tended to have a talent for sensing the afterlife due to their daily proximity to death.

The current examiner made no indication of agreeing. The pen scurried over the paper.

"Apart from that, she is – was a very bright, sporty, healthy girl. This has...come out of nowhere."

The coroner nodded, rested his writing apparatus on the table and moved over to the bed, snapping on some disposable surgical gloves as he did so. Gently, with an apologetic glance at Yuzu, he lifted the white shroud from the small cadaver's face.

"Bruising on the temple," he murmured to the dictaphone in his pocket. "By the way, Yuzu can leave now if she wishes."

"I'm fine," said the girl tightly. She was clinging to her father's arm.

"Anytime you feel the need, just go." repeated the coroner. Not to chase her away, but to make sure she wouldn't feel pressured to stay. "And bruising on the chest near to the location of the heart and above the centre of the ribs."

Isshin blinked away tears. Karin was meant to be in that body, her own, real body and running around happily. It was no overly-attached gigai like he wore.

"Strange bruises..." muttered the man, and Isshin looked up sharply. "I've seen bruises like this before; they're more like shadows on the skin..."

The mark of a Hollow's touch.

"A certain kind of internal bleeding?" asked the resident doctor, words like lead in his mouth.

"Caused by the migraines? A brain aneurysm, perhaps...or a stroke."

"A migraine shouldn't really...be connected to a brain aneurysm, when there are no pain receptors in the brain."

"Well, you must know as well as I do that there's no smoke without fire. Problems in the body can affect each other."

"Should...should a migraine affect your heart? Didn't Karin-chan have a heart attack?" Swallowing her discomfort, Yuzu had spoken up.

"No, not really," Isshin hastened to inform her. "The heart beats independently, that's why we have adrenaline to make it speed up. Unless she panicked so much that her heart went too fast and skipped." He raised an eyebrow at the coroner, who shrugged, busy inspecting the bruises.

"I could take a blood sample and check for traces of adrenaline...also, I'm afraid that her body may need to stay here until tomorrow. The mortuary really is overrun at the moment. I wouldn't usually ask, but you do have a designated place." The room wasn't chilly by accident. It was actually refrigerated to a low degree by design. "I have to say, you're both taking this rather well. Now, I don't wish to presume, but that may hint at premeditation when the police arrive."

Dr Kurosaki gave a shrug of his own. "They should understand that a doctor's clinic makes no secret of death being a part of life. And me and Yuzu, we're putting on a brave face until the punters have all gone home, aren't we sweetheart?" He hugged Yuzu to his side, able to reach out without looking thanks to her new habit of trailing him duckling-style.

She dug her hands into his sides, determined not to cry. Karin wouldn't want her to cry. And she understood now, how Karin's decision not to cry was made out of concern so as not to burden her family. She knew how hard it was now. But she would be like Karin, just in this small way. The same as when her mother had been murdered, Yuzu would move to fill in the gap.

It was the only thing she could do to keep her here.

**o)0(o**

As the cero hit, he felt a presence in the forest. Like a pebble thrown into a loch, its ripples were small but clear.

That was not a Hollow.

Somehow, after all these centuries, another human had come to the Menos no Mori.

The mask he was holding like a shield burned to ash, but the one positioned behind it did not, which was all that saved his distracted life. Spitting a few words of annoyance, the man struck at the Gillian before it could charge up another attack and severed it in two halves.

With a morbid scream, the giant vanished. Ashido brushed the ash from the useless mask off of his hands, sighing. Hollow masks rarely remained when the rest of them died - and specimens tough enough to deflect a cero were even rarer. But they were valuable for all that, so he would continue to scavenge them and draw the fire of the Menos Grande, just in the hopes of finding another.

The presence chimed again, and he stood for a moment, trying to decide whether to smile or frown, and trying with all his might to figure out whether this new shinigami's arrival was real or another figment of his occasionally fevered imagination.

Five hundred years can do that to a person. Over and over again.

Slipping into the state of concentration that allowed one to see spirit threads, he found several black, as always, leading to the countless minus spirits in this miserable realm - and the suggestion of a red ribbon curling in the distance.

Well, there were Gillians in that direction he could kill, so it wouldn't hurt to check it out, right?

"Right, Genji?" he asked aloud, speaking to a long dead best friend before groaning and scrubbing his hand across his face. He had to stop doing this.

Well, no one was going to stop him or tell him off, but he vaguely remembered it wasn't a mentally healthy thing to do...

Leaping through the petrified forest, from quartz branch to crystal trunk, Ashido wondered what to do with the thing under his arm. He was pretty sure by now that it was a real person, and the prospect of true company in this barren loneliness was making his sanity kick and claw its way back to the surface of his mind.

He would have to test the woman, of course. There was no point in her staying within Hueco Mundo if she would only be eaten alive by week two; and there again she might want to leave anyway. He doubted she had the same shadows of her past clinging to her here.

And probably he would take her back to the den, in its hidden nook that the adjuchas had not been able to find for a few weeks now. He hoped she wouldn't be hungry, because the kinds of things he was driven to eat would turn the strongest of stomachs.

It was one of the many, many reasons he hid and conserved his reiatsu as much as possible. Less energy used meant less to replace.

And that was why she kicked him in the back and escaped as fast as possible, seconds after waking up.

Naturally, she couldn't sense his human spirit, it being tucked away inside himself. And Ashido slowly remembered that the masks and furs he wore were not normal, and that strangers would need to see his face even if removal of the skulls might leave him open to an unexpected cero blast.

But she should know that a Hollow will not carry its prey away to eat later. It will just devour them immediately.

He really would need to test her. And if she was not strong enough to survive alone, he would try to escort her above the sands and hopefully to a Garganta. It would take time, but would be necessary.

In two flash steps, he had caught her again.

She beat him up all the way back to his hideout, but at least his antelope-like mask hid his silent laughter. The fists of a shinigami were nothing to the jaws of a Hollow.

Her kicks, on the other hand, _were_ painful.

The time for an introduction had come. He tried to recall how these things went; how to speak more than three-word sentences.

"My name is Ashido Kano, and I am indeed a shinigami. I have lived in this forest for hundreds of years. After my friends died, I followed the duty of a member of the Gotei 13 and tried to exterminate the Hollows at source."

Hooking the horned mask up and away from his face, Ashido revealed his messy dark red hair, slim and wary eyes; unsmiling mouth. As they stared at each other, and drank in each other's appearances, he began to believe that this might not be an illusion after all.

"I am Kuchiki Rukia, member of the thirteenth division, and-"

A blast of power interrupted them, and her one-man audience shot away into the darkness. That was the aura of an adjuchas, one of the most dangerous denizens of the dead woods. And it was one that knew his name far too well.

Speaking of names, Kuchiki rang a bell as being quite important and familiar, but the reasons why escaped him. It wasn't his priority right now.

Chasing behind him, Rukia tried to take in the fact that she had been found by a five hundred year-old shinigami, who had been hunting his nemeses ever since he and his friends had made the mistake of charging through a Garganta. The striking mask he wore, with its large round eyes and long, twisted, ibex-like horns had formerly belonged to the Hollow that had killed the last of his friends. He had been wearing it ever since, as he sought his revenge. A huge fur hide, which must have been near-impossible to salvage without the previous owner disintegrating into spirit particles, swamped his body and hid his human form. Several more masks adorned it – bone armour plates.

She had guessed he was a shinigami before he had proved it. There was kido lighting his cave, and he had carried her with human hands. But his face, so simple and unscarred, had still come as a shock. The dark grey eyes seemed resolute, but how could he have remained alone for all that time without a hint of insanity or injury?

It seemed impossible. Perhaps he disguised it well.

Compared to a monotonous eternity in the Menos no Mori; a daily grind of killing, hunting, fleeing, surviving...the frantic action in that single day or night, those few hours, was unbelievable.

With the aid of Rukia's icy shikai, one of the adjuchas that had longest eluded him was dead. When they returned to the friends of his new companion - more humans? More new faces and voices? And a Quincy? - it was like a dream come true. The kind of dreams a loner far from home found to resemble jeering nightmares. He was scared of waking up back in his hovel, and seeing no one. But he said nothing, having learnt over the years that hallucinations had to run their course.

The other travellers of Hueco Mundo had been surrounded by Gillians and accompanied by minor Hollows - one had a curiously human face. Unless it was one of those strange, rare and near-legendary arrancars, then Ashido was becoming more and more certain of his doubts...

Rukia yelled at her friends for a while, reminding them that a Gillian should no longer be a big deal at any quantity, and that their hesitations were suicidal. When told of the dilemma of alerting more Hollows to their presence and location, she just scoffed and pointed out that such a thing was inevitable when travelling with Ichigo (who was less than pleased at the jibe). When told of Nel's sudden control over the Gillians, she frowned and pursed her lips. Whispering that any arrancar would likely have suspicious connections with - and Ashido didn't catch the name - the petite woman warned them to be cautious of their new acquaintances.

The Menos that had regathered were then obliterated in a sudden show of strength from the strangers. An entire herd of milling Gillians was wiped out as they apparently waited for further instructions from the arrancar child.

In no time at all, the crowd of people were turning to him and asking for guidance in the direction of the exit. Hoping it was still where he remembered it to be, Ashido saw no harm in showing them the way - so long as this dream didn't cause him to sleepwalk out of his hideout and unwittingly into danger.

There was a deep shaft in a cliff that could be crawled through and up to reach the dust-swept surface of the Hueco Mundo desert. It would even leave them fairly close to Las Noches, a place Ashido had avoided more than usual ever since its half-crumbling walls had been repaired and roofed with gleaming white domes.

Maybe that was connected to the recent changes in the Hollows. But Rukia had refused to tell him anything definite. He wondered how severe the problem was, that she feared to speak of it. But perhaps she was vague because she wasn't real.

None of it felt real until the Gillians gathered at the root of the chasm, brewing their ceros at the will of a stray, vengeful adjuchas; and in a crimson supernova sent the cliff crashing down on his head. He hoped Rukia and her friends had gotten away safely, even if they were figments. Surely he could ask for good news from his own imagination?

The unbearable weight of the earth smothered all thoughts from his head, and buried him in inky blackness. It was too painful to be fictional.

Shit, came his final, feeble moment of awareness.

He must have sleepwalked into a trap.

**o)0(o**

Orihime was hustled into a vast and barely-lit hallway, stumbling to an abrupt halt as Ulquiorra stopped pushing her and dropped her arm like it had insulted him. Looking around the room furtively, trying not to draw the gaze of the other inhabitants with her own terrified glances; she hoped to god she hadn't been right.

She prayed with all her might that she had not been brought here to be mutated into a Hollow. Had they just been waiting for her to drop her guard and believe that they hadn't desired her personally?

But what reason would Aizen have to wait?

Hougyoku, whispered the back of her mind. The Hougyoku right there.

_Within reach._

However, when the entire upper bastion of Aizen's forces were in a single room, it may as well have been on the other side of the world.

Inoue glared at it, imprinting it on her memory and burning it into her soul by sheer force of will. She would not be left helpless like this forever. She was determined to get her hands on the Hougyoku and...

_Unmake it._

That was her cunning plan, having realised that it was the only thing in this fortress that could not fight back and kill her whilst she attempted to reject it out of time, space; and into oblivion.

Ice slush born of fear began to trickle through her stomach.

She would never be able to destroy the Hougyoku, the amplifier of Aizen's already prodigious powers, if she was turned into a Hollow here and now.

_She could not bear to be made Hollow._

Not like Sora.

Not like Sora.

Not like her brother.

Barragan had returned, and nodded curtly to his masters, loath though he was to admit them as such. Aizen returned the gesture with a small smile, and clicked his fingers.

A portal appeared in the centre of the widely-proportioned room. It was not a Garganta, there were no spirit particles within, only shadows of dark matter. It was a pathway only pure souls could tread without guidance.

"Tousen," said the architect of Soul Society's doom pleasantly. "If you would."

Approaching the ragged doorway with no need of eyes to sense the rip in reality, Tousen Kaname, the former Ninth Division Captain, reached out with a delicate hand and stroked the empty air in a come-hither movement.

Bidden by the gesture almost as fragile as itself, a hell butterfly fluttered out of the sliver between dimensions and alighted upon his outstretched finger. In a place so tenuous as this, more than a single jigoku-cho was needed, and so the blind man waited until he felt the feather-touch of several more butterflies before stepping forwards into the unknown.

Orihime realised she was holding her breath. How did this strange ritual fit into the process of creating an arrancar? Seconds ticked by with no clocks to count them; moments dragged their feet behind each other.

"Hope 'e ain't lost," said Ichimaru Gin, dropping the quip into the silence with his kitsune smile. No one returned it.

As the time stretched further than was comfortable, the tension was at last broken when Tousen stepped back out of the rift in a cloud of black butterflies. They filled the room, flaunting the deep red-pink crescents at the edges of their wings, the most vibrant colour in all the worlds.

There was a small, limp something draped over Tousen's arms. Leaning from side to side, Inoue tried to catch a proper glimpse of it around the swarming butterflies. When she did, her skin drained of all blood, turning as ashen as Ulquiorra's in her horrified surprise.

Wrapped in a plain grey yukata and with a dark bruise in the centre of her forehead, the person lying unconscious in the enemy's clutches was inexplicably...

Kurosaki Karin.

Tousen hefted the little girl upright and set her on the floor in front of Aizen Sosuke. There was only a single link left on her Chain of Fate; now that the obscuring insects had scattered Orihime could see that the bruise was in fact a Hollow hole - driven straight through the core of the child's skull.

Released from the support, Karin's soul slumped sideways bonelessly. Not a single twitch of controlled movement troubled her still form. Inoue clutched at the black-bordered white fabric of her dress, falling into a crouch as her stomach heaved with nausea.

Ichigo's little sister.

_Ichigo's little sister._

What kind of sick travesty was this?

Hadn't they taken enough from Kurosaki-kun already, these Hollows? What purpose could kidnapping and carving out the metaphysical heart of Kurosaki-kun's little sister possibly hold?

"Who is this?" asked Aizen, purely as a formality. The king he had usurped shrugged carelessly.

"I did not ask. It merely occurred that the first human I came across was of the required calibre."

"Kuro-!" shouted Inoue; unable to bite the words back early enough. All eyes in the room fell on her, each pair with its own level of lizard-like disdain for anything not themselves. Tousen tilted his head towards her.

"Mmm? You know this li'l chick, Ori-chan?" Gin's voice chirped with false friendship.

Chewing on her bottom lip, Inoue straightened up from the floor and pushed her auburn hair out of her face. She stared at the victim's small, prone body with tears in her eyes.

"She...she's Ichigo's little sister...Kurosaki Karin...and – she's only _twelve_, for god's sake!"

"You are only three or four years different," Aizen reminded her. He shared a wide grin with his right-hand albino. "Kurosaki's little sister..."

"Don't get much better than that," agreed Ichimaru, walking closer to roll the child onto her back with the toe of his sandal. "I love ironic stuff like this - it's hilarious."

"It makes sense though." Szayal Apollo had interrupted. "When looking for souls with similar defects to our current invader, the first port of call would naturally be his closest relatives."

"She is the correct type, then?" confirmed Aizen Sosuke, resting his chin comfortably in his palm.

"The easiest way to demonstrate this," stated Szayel, lifting one of Karin's lifeless arms and exuding reiatsu around his hand; "is to show how the volume of spiritual power grows automatically when the specimen is in a risky situation such as a battle. Take note of her aura." Expanding his own just enough to inconvenience the small human, he broke her little finger with a clinical snap.

Karin's reiatsu flared. It was still laughable compared to that of the Espada, but it had increased instantly and noticeably.

"Her power can increase in this fashion exponentially, the same as her brother's does." He let go of her hand with a flick. "As such the Hougyoku should present no problem to her."

"Wonderful," Aizen applauded him. "Then let us begin, my dear Espadas." The final link hanging from the bracket on Karin's suddenly devoured itself, and he amended his words. "Let us begin _immediately_."

The low, harsh scream of a degenerating Plus was building up inside Karin; a cry of wild suffering dragged from the darkest depths of the soul until it broke free of the throat in a reverberating wail. Her body jerked upright, swaying on its knees.

"Way of Binding Number..." said Gin quickly, steepling his fingers and casting the kido; the rest of his words drowned out by the instinctive screams of the blacked out child.

Shouting turned to strangled gurgling as white clay started to bubble out of Karin's mouth, harbinger of the future mask as she fully devolved into a Hollow. Aizen touched his fingertips to the fluid surface of the Hougyoku, tiny tendrils wriggling out of it and latching on to him, leech-like. He poured his power into it, donating reiatsu twice that of any captain to the transformation.

The Kurosaki girl's struggles ceased when Gin's kido bandages smothered her, trapping in the effects of the scientific magic that was about to occur.

Orihime ran to the far corner of the hall, unheeded by her jailor or any other arrancar. She needed to escape this pressure in the air before it suffocated her. Huddling down, she commanded her shield to appear and hoped that her fairies would survive the onslaught.

She need not have worried. The ceremony was over almost immediately. The end was heralded by the clatter of a zanpakuto on the floor, one that had not existed before.

The mummified figure in the centre of the room shuddered, breathing harshly.

Hallibel stepped up to unwrap the bandages, just enough to reveal a face whose eyes were sharper than Karin's had been, whose skin was so pale it made Ulquiorra look grey; and the open, gasping mouth bared needle-sharp rows of piranha teeth. There was nothing of Ichigo's little sister left here.

She was almost colourless.

And despite the transformation, still mindless.

Panicking butterflies darted around the ceiling, some settling on the newborn child soldier with no visible thought for their safety. Unable to resist any longer, Wonderwice ran out of the loose circle of Espadas and Privarons; firing Balas at the pretty targets that swooped so temptingly above his head.

Several butterflies were burned to ashes within seconds. As he aimed for one resting on Karin's unmoving shoulder, a hand shot out and clapped against his. Shadowy reiatsu, almost a kind of black light, flickered in the girl's palm. It nullified his Bala much like the green-hatted shinigami had during his visit to the human world. Wonderwice Margera whined in childish irritation at the memory.

He opened his mouth to charge up a red Cero, never one to adhere to Aizen's schedules.

Karin's hand closed over his mouth, and the dark reiatsu flickered again, matching and cancelling out his Cero faster than he could form it. He fell still, submissive. Even the admittedly mentally retarded arrancar could tell this newcomer was dangerous, despite the pretties that adorned her so innocently.

"Success," announced the mastermind of the operation magnanimously. "Instinct is all we need from her. And her instincts are likely impeccable. This time, we shall wait until we are outside before testing her Resurrección capabilities, however."

Gin and Stark laughed briefly.

Releasing her shield, Inoue hid her face in her hands and sobbed.

When Ichigo learned of this, it was going to destroy him...

**o)0(o**

**Belated Bloomake!**

_Arrancar Cup?_

**o)0(o**

"That was the most awful introduction I have ever seen," grumbled Ichigo.

"At least there was no poetry…" noted Ishida.

To submerse the world in devastation!

To unite all Hollows within our nation!

To denounce the goodness of truth and love!

To extend our reach to the moon above!

Dondo! Nel! Pesche! Bawabawa that's right!

They shuddered at the mental image.

Yup. Thank heaven for that.

**o)0(o**

**Author's Notes:**

The end of the last chapter was far too sad to have a bloomake. So here it is.

**o)0(o**

**Bloomake!**

_Arrancar Encyclopaedia_

**o)0(o**

Rukia: I'm amazed you've stayed sane for all this time, Ashido!

Ashido: Yes…um…can I ask you a favour?

Rukia: Yes?

Ashido: Will you come to my unicorn's tea party at Las Noches tomorrow?

Rukia: Um…no…?

Ashido: Just Bawabawa and Miss Enid then…I hope they like TimTams…

**o)0(o**

_Wonderwice is standing in front of a chalkboard, very excited at his first Arrancar Encyclopaedia spot. There is a badly drawn butterfly on the board, Rukia-style._

W: *pointing with a stick* Bwaaa! Ehehe!

W: *miming something* DOOSH DOOSH BAMMM!

W: *pulls out giant claymore and decimates chalkboard* Squee e e e !

Gin: Tousen, would ya keep yer pet away from my omakes?

Tousen: He's a free spirit. Locking him up would be unjust.

W: Many thanks for your wonderful and energising reviews, watch out for the show same time next week! Adios!

G&T: O_o;;

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	5. Prayer versus Declaration

**~o) Hell Butterfly (o~**

**Prayer versus Declaration  
**

**~05~**

**o)0(o**

Rukia pressed her fist into the ground, coarse sand cutting into her skin with barely noticed incisions. Her dark hair fell across her face as she stared downwards, trying to see through the layers of rock and sediment and fossilised tree branches. Trying to see Ashido.

He had waited five hundred years. Even to someone with over a century and a half under their belt like her, it was a mind-blowing span of time. And he had fought to the bitter end every one of those days to decrease the Hollow threat upon the world of the living.

That had been his duty. That had been his choice. So perhaps, to say he had been waiting for rescue was wrong.

But she wished, with all her will power, as if it could alter reality; that she could have rescued him anyway.

He had finally decided to leave.

Exhaling as though every breath was a stone falling from her lungs, Kuchiki Rukia said a silent farewell and tried to convince herself it was for the best. Did she really want to take him back to the Soul Society he had willingly left behind - and show him how torn it was? Tell him that his old home was broken, his efforts had been in vain, and trusted shinigami captains were even now empowering the evillest of Hollows to destroy the world?

But nothing she offered as reason or excuse erased her guilt. She was the one who had brought him to that tunnel at that time. Once again she had betrayed someone she admired and respected.

_When we leave Hueco Mundo, I will return here and bring you home,_ she vowed wordlessly. _If you still survive, because I _know_ you are strong; whether you are a lifeless corpse. Even if there's nothing to take, I will carry your memory back to Soul Society and command a grand funeral for the shinigami so loyal - and all of his friends. I promise Ashido..._

_...I will come back for you._

**o)0(o**

Before they commenced the final trek towards Las Noches - now much closer - the rescue squad paused to take stock of their surroundings and condition.

"I got bitten by a Hollow," griped Renji, holding out the puffy wound on his upper arm in exasperation. "Rukia, could you-?"

"_Bleghhh_..."

"UGH what the hell are you doing?" shouted the tattooed fukutaicho, punching Nel off of her sudden perch on his shoulder. "That freak just threw up on me!"

No one managed to react immediately, most being quite too weirded-out to respond. Nel thudded into a dune and sat up, pointing at her shinigami-shaped sick bucket as if he had called her rude name. Which to be honest, he had.

"Hey! Dat's not vomit, it's my speshul healing saliva! You shouldn't hit people dat are just twying to help!"

"It's what now?" asked Rukia, her hands still half-raised in preparation for a medical kido spell.

"Nel's saliva repairs damage, donchaknow. It's powerful stuff!" explained Dondochakka, sounding proud of his so-called little sister. Pesche scratched the side of his beetle-ish mask briefly. "Well, it might be vomit..." he admitted unsurely. "We've never really checked."

The expressions of the invasion crew progressed from shocked to squicked.

"I'll stick with Rukia," said Renji baldly. However as promised, there was nothing left to heal when he held out his arm to her for the second time. Nel stuck her tongue out at him the next time he looked at her. "Itsygo will aksept my help, won't you Itsygo?" Her voice was as pointed as a child's lisp could make it.

Ichigo hastened to assure her otherwise. "NO! ...No, I'm fine, thanks."

"Well that makes a change," said Ishida slyly. The strawberry glared daggers at him.

"What are you trying to say?"

"Don't act so surprised, Substitute! You get ripped to shreds in every single battle you enter!" Now Renji was mocking him. _Renji_.

Chad shifted slightly and agreed. "It's true." Ichigo blinked, why was everyone against him all of a sudden?

"I dare you to admit it out loud. Your fighting style is abysmal." Rukia's grin was wide and challenging. He folded his arms and frowned back. He was good at frowning.

"The same thing happens to all of us, why are we picking on just me? And considering the kind of people we've been fighting, the fact that we're still alive has got to be proof of some skill, right?" The furrow in his brow smoothed briefly and he grinned straight back at the first shinigami he had ever met. "Except you Rukia, I can't think of anyone special you've beate-"

"Finish that sentence and I will come to your house in the middle of the night and annihilate you." The petite soul reaper's face was demonic, large blue eyes only conveying greater hatred. She could have been a seated officer, damn it! It was only her Nii-sama's influence that kept her from kicking the asses of_ all _their enemies. She sniffed haughtily, walking away towards the white fortress. "If all we're doing is standing around and bickering, then I suggest we get a move on."

**o)0(o**

When they reached the high walls that surrounded Las Noches, they felt quite helpless. When Nel chirped that the closest gateway was three days' walk to the east, they felt a more than a little thwarted.

When Ichigo suggested they just blast a new hole in the wall, they cheered.

"And the whole purpose of the sneak entry was...?"

Ichigo just shrugged helplessly at the short woman. "You saw the way those Gillians swarmed towards us - as for me being able to sneak, I'm not that optimistic." He pulled Zangetsu's heavy black blade off his shoulders, the bandages that wrapped it in place of a sheath flying every which way. "Besides," he smirked; "if we knock loud enough, the right people might answer."

Renji moved to stand opposite him, Zabimaru showing all its spiky glory. Having shared a look and selected the unlucky section of via sideways glances, raised eyebrows and nods of heads; both began to shunt their reiatsu into their zanpakutos until the sharp edges gleamed with blue and red light. But before they could knock, someone opened the door.

With a Cero.

Had the invaders not been standing out of range of their friends' strikes, more than one would have been killed by the superheated, lancing energy of that golden Cero.

Coughing and hacking on the air that was mostly brick dust and churned-up sand, Renji and Ichigo charged instinctively at the figure obscured by the clouds it had created. Metal clanged, and a huge spiritual pressure pushed the clouds aside.

It could only be an Espada.

He was blocking Ichigo and Renji's combined charged attacks singlehanded, with the shaft of an enormous double-headed, crescent-bladed axe. And that he was holding in one hand.

The Arrancar's black-haired head rolled back to rest against the large, circular parody of a halo that framed his collar. His eyes were long and slanting; pupils tiny, baleful pin-pricks. Baring large, sharp teeth like Kurotsuchi Mayuri's, he grunted out a greeting.

"Took your sweet fucking time getting here, didn't you?" He thrashed the fifteen foot long axe sideways, sending his two opponents flying backwards. "The entertainment had better be worth the wait."

Then something small caught his eye, and he gave a vicious grin.

"What a revelation… What a pissing _miracle_. I never expected to see you losers back here again..." Holding the mammoth weapon by the very end of its shaft, he stretched out and hooked the tip under the feet of the smallest visitor to Las Noches. Squeaking and trying not to fall onto the sharp edges, Nel tried desperately to keep her balance on the centre of the axe where the two waning moons connected back-to-back.

"...It's been great round here without you, stupid fucking female...I've nearly worked my way up to your old rank - and that's with the _current_ strength of the Espada."

Still gathering their wits, the import of the arrancar's words was completely lost on the reeling Plus souls. Nnoitra, the Quinta Espada, took no notice of them. He was not interested in weaklings who could not even shift his zanpakuto. But Nel Tu was a very pleasing little toy indeed.

Time to play.

With a flick of his wrist, the tiny Hollow child was tossed high into the air. Nnoitra spun the axe in his grip, coiling his body into a spring before lunging like a tennis champion smacking a power serve - the battleaxe was his racket, and the fast-dropping Nel had the bad luck to be the ball.

Milliseconds before contact Ichigo intercepted the blow. His feet skidded backwards in the sand; Nel bounced off his head. Peeking up from the ground, she cringed immediately as that black steel axe levered down on Itsygo. By the time she dared look again, his orange head was cracking off the towering walls of the midnight citadel, body sliding down.

She reached out one of her little, weak, child's hands towards him. "I-Itsygo..."

Smoke exploded, hiding everything, she never saw where it came from. But when she could see again, the hand that was still helplessly towards her strange, fallen, shinigami comrade had...changed?

It was no pudgy toddler's hand. The fingers were long and elegant, the arm lean, the wrist tilted gracefully...the palm cupping a sheathed katana. And she stared at it and knew its name. And she looked at the Espada who was glaring at her with his irate, hateful eyes and knew his name, even as his chest heaved and the axe shook with the force of his anger. And she looked at Las Noches, and knew that if she stepped inside those blank walls she would recognise its featureless halls perfectly.

This was her home. And if Aizen's propaganda was to be believed, Nnoitra was her brother.

A brother that had taken sibling rivalry to the feuding level.

"Ichigo," she said again, reminding herself of his risky position. Three sonido steps later and he was propped up against a rock far from the danger zone - though in a fight between Espada she predicted such safety would be negligible. He stirred and mumbled weakly, she ignored his pleas for her to step away from the battle. It must have been his confusion talking, mused Nel, turning back to Nnoitra just as a strong wind blew out of nowhere. She completely failed to catch Ichigo's shocked choking as her huge, unmistakeable tattoo of a gothic number 3 was unveiled by the breeze.

_E-E-Espada?_ squeaked the only portion of Ichigo's brain still working. Small hyperactive children do not turn into Amazonian warriors every day, of course.

"Please do not worry, Ichigo. I have been fighting Nnoitra for a very long time. I used to win against him every day of the week." Drawing her sword as if she had never been parted from it, she sent a filthy look at her old sparring partner. "To be honest, it was never worthy of being called a fight, and I dislike bullying..."

In an instant she was back in front of Nnoitra, stabbing his head clean through. He tched and stepped backwards, completely unfazed.

"Have you forgotten everything, you stupid bint? Cutting empty air doesn't get you any points." Tossing aside his ruined eye patch, a Hollow hole carved straight through the left side of his face was revealed. It was ringed with sharp teeth, enamel points growing out of a strange twist of bone. "Don't expect this to be anything like our other fights. The Espada have evolved in power fivefold since I chucked you out."

"You must be happy," murmured Nel with a hint of sarcasm. "I bet all the girls have gone too."

His face twitched. "Thunderwitch got kicked out to Privaron, but the Tres is still a bitch like you. The Quatro is pretty fucking girly too..." Nel laughed in reply.

That stopped abruptly when Nnoitra shot out his axe, striking a gash in Ishida's shoulder. The buxom former Espada moved quickly to block further attacks, her leaf-green mane billowing with the speed of her parries. "Targeting the weaker companions again, I see..." hissed the warrior, her hatred sibilant.

She caught sight of Dondochakka and Pesche in the corner of her field of vision. They were crying with joy at her transformation into the capable adult who had once led them in battle, yet their tears only reminded her of a memory from her pseudo-childhood - her two loyal Fraccion, hiding beneath tattered rags until they could thieve new faces; as their masks had been ripped off. An arrancar may find new strength in the breaking of its mask, but all that power is lost and more so should the remaining shards be totally lost.

Nnoitra stuck his tongue out at her in a vulgar fashion, the black '5' symbolising his ascent through three ranks during her exile clearly visible. "Gonna call me a cheater?" he asked mockingly.

She spin-kicked his deadly curved axe head away barefooted. The dark, mournful sockets of her fractured skull mask stared at him gravely as she dipped her head down in a moment of thought. Taupe eyes rose to look straight through him, as though he were worthless, when she voiced her measured reply.

"There is no cheating in war. Solely survival. I do not judge you for stooping to diversions and attacking me from behind in order to shatter my mask. Any person, who enters willingly into battle without just cause, is already beneath such moralisations. All warriors are already in the wrong."

A bead of molten yellow was dripping off the end of Nnoitra Jiruga's still-extended tongue. It seemed that Nel had not seen it yet, which worried Rukia. That was clearly the beginnings of a Cero, an acid gold like the blast that had torn down the impeding wall of Aizen's castle. As she watched, it grew to a berry, and then an apple-sized sphere of soul pressure. But their knight was still blindly shouting her speech.

"My Fraccion had no part in our battle, Jiruga! And it is the price of damaging innocents under my command that you will now pay, so-called Quinta Espada!" Raising her zanpakuto to shoulder height in readiness for her Resurreccion, she spotted the ripening Cero hovering beneath her nemesis's stretched smile.

Spotted it – too late?

**o)0(o**

"Nel...the third strongest Espada, with her own Fraccions?" Ichigo asked himself, utterly bewildered. "Nel? The toddler Hollow that plays Eternal Tag and throws up on people?"

Hiding behind his rock, two former Fraccion sighed. "We used to be so cool." Pesche wept, nostalgia overcoming him. "They used to call me the Fricción Fracción."

"Uh, no, you called yourself that, yaknow..." Dondochakka reminded him. "I really miss the Las Noches food, friend."

"Tousen's Hueco Hotpot..."

"Cero Surprise for pudding..." They heaved another shared heartfelt sigh.

Ichigo crawled dizzily around his rock just so he could hit them both on the head. "You have _got_ to be bullshitting me," he croaked.

Pride wounded and egos thoroughly stung, the two Hollows retaliated by promptly bursting into...tears. "We'll show you!" threatened Pesche, pointing down at Ichigo whose eyes were now spiralling from giddiness. "We have a grudge against the Eighth, uh what is he these days, the Fifth Espada!"

"We're gonna take personal revenge, see what I mean?" growled Dondochakka, sounding alarmingly more like a mafia don than ever. He punched his fist into the meaty palm of his other hand. "We'll use _that_ attack."

"Yeah, yeah, _that_ one," agreed Pesche Guatiche fervently. "Then you'll be sorry you ever doubted us, Itsygo!" But he wasn't listening.

Ichigo truly believed his concussion had caused him to hallucinate. Was Nel…_kissing_ Nnoitra?

**o)0(o**

Instead of dodging the point blank attack like any sane person would attempt to do, Nel had darted forwards and seemingly head butted the Quinta Espada.

"Shit," spat Jiruga. "I forgot about your little speciality, Neliel!" He referred to 'Cero Doblé', the unique ability to consume and ricochet an attack – usually with one of her own added in.

Before it had even fully developed, the woman had opened her mouth and swallowed his yellow Cero whole. And now she was munching it distractedly, like a horse chews the cud. "Eehh, you're right..." she mumbled, trying not to part her lips and let it escape. "You really have grown much more powerful."

"Of course I did, you skank."

Leaning in close again, close enough to make the misogynist wince, she pursed her lips. The Cero swelled out, she was a kid blowing bubblegum; and the bubble of condensed explosive energy popped forcefully in his face. Dripping blood, he lashed out at her blindly. He only hit an echo. Sonido had already taken her far away.

Holding out her zanpakuto for a second time, she gave him one final warning before unleashing her Resurrección. "You have clawed your way to being the Quinta Espada, Nnoitra Jiruga. So allow me to jog your faded memory. I am Neliel Tu Oderschvank, the Tres Espada. And I have _never_ been defeated by the likes of you, whom is not even a warrior." Eyes steely above the red stripe of her natural war paint, the woman released her true form.

"Declare..."

A vast expanding sphere of yellow-green energy surrounded her, churning the white sands into the black sky.

"Gamuza!"

**o)0(o**

Four widely-stanced hooves thudded into the ground, soft shockwave sending a thrill through her body. After so many months of unknowing imprisonment in a tiny, powerless, child's body...she glorified in the sensation of her true form.

It was such a shame that arrancars kept their real selves locked away for so much of the time. But she could tell her reiatsu was still weak and small, and that full power could not be maintained for anything over a few minutes.

It would have to be enough.

As the glowing green reiatsu and dust it had kicked up cleared, Neliel could see the mismatched group of humans and shinigamis staring at her in awe and surprise. The short dark one was healing the Quincy, distractedly, and the rest were fixated fully upon this unexpected Espada duel. Most importantly, she had spotted her two Fracción behind the enraged Nnoitra. They were gesturing wildly, and it was either a highly important message…or they were playing charades.

Nnoitra witnessed his ancient enemy morph into a proud and rampant centaur, disgusted. It was sickening that this female, furthermore this recently-enough _baby_ thought she could still defeat him as easily as in the past. He knew he couldn't take her lightly, but it would be insulting to take her seriously. No matter how many of his weak points she already knew, no matter how much experience she had in combat against him, he just wanted to ignore the fact that the antelope woman knew his fighting style inside out. It was too irksome to admit.

But not admitting it would be fatal. In compromise, he settled on squashing her like a horsefly in his released form. It would be a mocking display of how powerful the Espada had become in her absence. Rather than an admission that she was still a threat.

_I am the strongest_.

She had seared and peeled back his vaunted steel skin with the advantages of surprise and close range firing; nevertheless her lead would soon be over.

_I am the strongest_.

"Pray," slurred Nnoitra; weighted down by his heavy golden reiatsu until the tipping point into his true form would allow his physical body to keep up with his spiritual brawn. "Sa-"

Neliel's hooves kicked him in the face, all the power of a Privaron Espada's hind legs rammed into his neck with a sickening snap. Slammed against the white wall of the castle, he staggered and swore.

"I told you the Espada were five times stronger than before, bitch! There is no way you can defeat me!"

"Every next rank in the Espada is at least as strong again as the last. There were five ranks between us, and I was five times more powerful than you. If our level is now equal, then only the better warrior will win." She glanced again at her once and future Fracción, their plot finally becoming clear. As Nnoitra approached, her centaur half pranced briefly to warm up before she shot into a gallop of blinding speed. "Estampida!"

Blurring into several echoes of herself with an incredible Sonido, the woman herded her enemy away from the wall and corralled him in the centre of their impromptu battlefield. The ground shook. Every time he attempted to resurrect his real body she would lash out and distract him from his purpose. He was beginning to get really, really pissed off.

Then there was finally an opening. The heifer had taken a run up, hefting her double-ended lance in a bone-armoured hand. Waiting until vibrant green energy spiralled around its point, she threw it like a javelin.

"Lanzador Verde!"

"Pray; Santa Teresa!"

The lethal drill, driven by a whirl of emerald reiatsu, cut through the air in a flash. It spun to a useless halt on Nnoitra's reborn hierro skin. He looked down at the weapon as if it were no more than a blunt stick to him, which was the truth. Brushing it aside, he sneered. "Too late, Nel Tu."

"For you, perhaps;" she replied in her soft, child-like voice. And only then did he realise what was happening behind him.

All of her attacks until now had been diversions.

Those two pathetic Fracción of hers, even more wretched than Tesla, had been moulding an attack in deadly unison for all this time. The smaller was sat atop the large, and their grudge against him for ripping off their faces must have felt pretty damn raw ever since for them to have prepared such a surprising retaliation.

Hovering in the scorched air before them was a vast sphere of their respective lemon yellow and amethyst purple reiatsus. Nnoitra wasn't worried in the slightest until the energies converged into a massively volatile orb of white lightning.

"Cero Sincrético!"

He ceased his pre-emptive blocking and ran, dodging by a hairsbreadth the pale blast of crackling, swirling Cero that sizzled past him. Livid, the Quinta Espada flash stepped behind the laughable pair who had just endangered his very life. Extending all six of his praying mantis arms, he cricked his neck under the weight of his crescent moon crown, giving them a short moment to cower before their demise.

A sextet of black, talon-bladed axes scythed down.

"Idiot," gasped Pesche Guatiche, sprinting away with the speed and stamina of one accustomed to Eternal Tag marathons. "Gloating is the enemy of success!"

Dondochakka followed close behind, a gash in the back of his polka dot jumpsuit the cost of tardiness. "Neliel-sama is still behind you, donchaknow!"

He looked over his shoulder and almost flinched in horrific understanding. There was no scarred landscape behind him from the passage of the synchronised Cero. Only the sombre form of Neliel Tu Oderschvank, former Tres Espada.

The eye sockets of her skull mask were glowing; the ridged ram-horns quivering with pent up energy. She wore a grimace of concentration. With each passing millisecond the condensing power in her throat jerked her head further and further back. Her speech was stilted and painful.

"G…"

Nnoitra leapt out of her range, yet she simply turned her neck and stepped with him. She was clenching her gauntleted fists over her mouth, biting back the explosion until it was ready.

"Gran Rey Cero Treblé!" declared the centaur; pounding down all four chamois legs just to keep from being blown away by her own attack. Nel stretched her jaws open and roared.

The flare blinded everyone in the area, seared the sky, melted the sand to glass and birthed the first heat haze the chill desert had ever known. It faded slowly with the acrid stench of burnt flesh. A ripple of warmth spread out from the detonation zone, charred smoke buffeting invisibly against the black sky.

In his silicon grave, Nnoitra hissed; let go of the ruined battleaxes. His words were as broken as the rest of him. "You couldn't win on your own, then, you fucking failure. What happened to all…your retarded chivalry?" His nerves were still on fire. His mouth was filling with something thicker than water.

Neliel stared up at the steely crescent moon hanging low in the starless night. She reminded him of her earlier speech. "There are no morals, especially in a battle between the damned."

"I am not damned!" screamed Nnoitra, choking on his own blood. "I am not damned! I am the strongest, and I will become the ruler of this whole place!"

"And then what?" asked Nel laconically.

"I am not damned!" shrieked the dying arrancar. Hearing that desperate declaration made Renji finally realise why Hollows fought so maniacally. They were warring against their own despair. He shared a heavy glance with Rukia. Hollows existed in a hell world indeed.

"_I am not damned_!"

"Not anymore, I pray," stated Neliel Tu Oderschvank as the violent fiend fell still, without the slightest ceremony or transition between the screams of the dying and the silence of the dead. The sombre victor cantered to the side of the molten glass pit and leaned down to retrieve her lance. Already fat sparks of spiritual matter were beginning to disintegrate from the Quinta's corpse.

"Two equal opponents with only their individual instinct to separate them. It's King and Horse, Nnoitra Jiruga."

Ichigo registered these words with a sense of unease. The concept of King and Horse – did all Hollows share it? And did even this proud, moral Neliel have a human soul cruelly subdued within?

"Where is your Hollow hole, Nel?" he asked, wondering if perhaps she too had undergone a similar battle of wills, as he and his pale double had.

"We can never predict the result of the Hougyoku," she informed him. "I…do not have a Hollow hole."

"Did you…have to make a choice? Or fight for…something?" Ichigo had no idea how to word it without letting slip just what kind of psychotic alter-ego was hiding within his soul. His friends might know the Hollow was there, but god forbid they learn what the Hollow was really _like_ – just inches away from ruling him.

Neliel stared into the middle distance. Perhaps it held her memories. "A very long time ago, my heart lost a battle, and I was consumed by grief and loneliness and hunger. But this time, I believe the heart won. So I do not know what I truly am, if it is Plus or Minus or both or neither."

"Human." Chad spoke quietly. He seemed lost in thought himself. "Hollows may lack reason and empathy, but we are still..." he paused, realising what he had just said, and clenched his fists loosely. "We are still all humans, here."

He wanted it to be true, because the way his powers were settling down in a new and stronger alignment was starting to worry him. He was adapting to the Hueco Mundo environment…and it was improving him.

"Anyway!" cheered the green-haired Espada, interrupting the morbid silence. "Let's go do whatever we're meant to be doing!"

Ichigo coughed guiltily. He had only just realised that Nel had never been told why they had come here. As they filed into the gaping rift in the wall of Las Noches, Kurosaki began to explain.

There was a _POP!_ behind them.

"Umm, Itsygo?" ventured a tiny voice. "I shwank again…"

**o)0(o**

**Bloomake!**

_Arrancar Encyclopaedia_

**o)0(o**

Neliel: I wonder what would bring Itsygo to Hueco Mundo anyway...in all my afterlife, I have never seen a shinigami in this place...well, except Ashido.

Nnoitra: Oh yeah, Ashido.

Tesla: Well Ashido is just...

Hallibel: Comes with the territory right...

Barragan: Little rat used to steal my food.

Aizen: Who's Ashido?

Wonderwice: Dude...do you know nothing?

**o)0(o**

**Chapter Notes:**_ Last chapter I forgot to explain for the benefit of the manga-only readers that Ashido Kano was an anime only filler character, but special because he was meant to be in the manga too. He was also freaking cool, because he looked like he'd just jumped out of a Ghibli film or two – namely, 'Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds' for the Menos Forest; and 'Princess Mononoke' for his fur coat and masks. And yes, in the anime: Rocks Fell, Ashido Died. _

_As for this chapter, 'Estampida' means Stampede, and I changed Nel's reiatsu colour to yellow-green because her attack is called 'Lanzador Verde'._

_Nnoitra's Santa Teresa release refers to a praying mantis, and Don and Pesch really do have a super synchronised Cero._

_Alliriyan~*_


	6. Red Moon

**Hell Butterfly**

**Red Moon**

**~06~**

**o)0(o**

"Aizen-sama!" called a voice from beyond the doorway. "The invaders have broken our defences!"

"We c'd tell that from the gaping hole in the wall, nee-chan, but top marks for effort," replied Gin; not really interested in the warnings of an arrancar too minor to even sport a number.

Aizen crooked a smile. Ichimaru was always entertaining, if nothing else. Right now his second in command was messing around with the alignment of the castle corridors. Szayel had put in place a system that used hidden garganta to reduce the distances needed to travel around the palatial structure of Las Noches - and if nothing else, keep any 'visitors' on their toes. It was now being used to funnel Ichigo and his friends towards combat situations of the enemy's choosing.

"You're a bit behind, actually." Gin tapped a few keys one-handed, and one wall lit up with a multiscreen projection of various halls within Las Noches. "The Quincy is now fighting Cirucci Thunderwitch, the ryoka is against Dordonii Alessandro Del Socaccio and the...Chad is against Gantenbainne Mosqueda."

"The 'Chad'?" repeated the arrancar girl incredulously. Gin shrugged.

"Well I don' know what to call 'im, do you?"

Aizen smoothly interrupted the following silence to ask where the remaining invaders had ended up. A few clicks later, a large image of a pitch black chamber dominated the wall.

"Abarai-fukutaicho's got lost somewhere and is prob'ly fighting Privaron Bobb..."

"We don't have a Privaron Bobb."

"But here's the _gem_. Rukia-chan's fallen into th' hands of the Noveno Espada. Remember who _he _ate, Taicho?"

Aizen's schadenfreude smile was genuinely disturbing. He answered the pale man with great pleasure. "Shiba...Kaien."

**o)0(o**

"...Shiba...Kaien...dono..." whispered Rukia, feeling as if her heart had just been ripped out and all the regrets that stained it waved mockingly in her face.

He was just standing there. She knew him so well. Honest nature, daring eyes, constant teasing humour. Grey-green pupils, deep purple hair; wide smiling mouth.

No. That was wrong.

He was not smiling. She could feel his real, coarse hand stroke the crown of her head as he sombrely asked her to redeem her crimes. All she could do was nod: agree, and thank him for the opportunity to repent.

Then he requested that she kill her companions for him, and the trance was broken.

No. Hell no.

Never, ever again, would she murder a friend.

And Kaien-dono would never tell her to.

This was a lie.

Drawing away, she placed a hand on her sword and hardened herself. This was Hueco Mundo. This man was in white robes. Therefore it must be some kind of shape-shifting arrancar attempting to trick her. With the exact same face, voice and mannerisms of her dead senpai.

"You looked better in black, Shiba-san." Her tone was harsh, she strove to distance herself. She trapped the imposter in kido, blasted open the ceiling on a hunch, and watched her mentor's head melt away under the faux sunlight.

The creature scoffed distastefully. "With so many in Hueco Mundo whose powers only work in darkness, like myself, it's a mystery why Aizen-sama attempted to imitate sunlight."

Rukia barely heard its words, still taking in the hideous sight of the arrancar's true form. A tall glass bell rose out of its high pleated collar, filled with a plasma-like clear red liquid. Bobbing inside the substance were two small, round skulls. Little white spheres of teeth and empty eye sockets. The higher one had a '9' tattooed across one side of its face, and spoke in a high-pitched screech.

"Maybe it's for security – perhaps Aizen-sama is scared that I would eat his army and overpower him…" The monster escaped into the shadows, hiding from the burn of the light.

"You have an inflated opinion of yourself, Hollow." Anyone who had to hide behind facades and groundless boasts must be weak. The shinigami's quick mind was already working out strategies. One of the trickiest parts of fighting an arrancar was undoubted cutting through their steel skin – something that could only be accomplished with raw brute force. But this foe, which looked like it had just crawled out of Kurotsuchi-taicho's failed experiments lab, couldn't hold the same barriers. There was no way glass could have hierro.

A bubble swam from the base to the tip of the jar. The lower, deeper-pitched shrunken head spoke. "I am Aaroniero Arruruerie, the Noveno Espada. I am also the only Gillian among the Espada." A scrap of skin appeared on its glass flask, swelling fast to the size of a face, and the real head of the arrancar twisting round and absorbing into it.

"You are the ugliest Hollow I have ever seen," admitted the Kuchiki, taunting it to remind herself that the new appearance it was rearranging itself into was false. The handsome features of Shiba Kaien, Thirteenth Squad lieutenant, skewed in an unkind grin.

"I am the only Hollow capable of infinite potential!" he corrected her. He was holding a zanpakuto suddenly, and began to spin it around his hand like a baton; in a way that Rukia knew chillingly well. "My power is to totally absorb everything my enemy is – body, memory, experience, - zanpakuto and soul. But never mind…figure it out as we fight." The sword was glowing and extending; Rukia's heart was sinking with every rotation. No…that couldn't possibly be…

"Rage through the Seas and the Heavens, Nejibana!"

**o)0(o**

In the core of Las Noches, Aizen and Gin observed Kaien's old shikai for the first time since his death. A hybrid trident and Chinese halberd, there was a long blue tassel below the three prongs of its head and a spiral drill carved into the other end of its haft, reflecting its name: 'screw flower'. Everywhere the pike moved with its twirling speed it was chased by a powerful geyser of water.

The battle progressed quickly, both combatants well-versed in their opponent's styles. They parried with gouts of water and explosions of ice. But Rukia was always a step behind, and visibly beginning to realise that it was the real Kaien blocking or dodging every one of her shikai's first and second dances.

"She's gonna get butchered," predicted Gin. "An unseated shinigami versus an Espada, and he's the guy that trained her an' all…"

Sousuke Aizen was inclined to agree, although Arruruerie's ridiculous pride did tend to be his downfall whenever he tried to climb another rank. Aloud, he asked a question.

"And where did Nel Tu end up after you separated their group?"

"Aizen-sama!" cried a small, lisping voice. Neliel Tu Oderschvank, the three-foot-tall former Third, scampered into the control room and leapt onto the back of her leader's throne without an iota of respect. "…why is dis chair spinning?"

"Because it is convenient," replied the lord of Las Noches genially. He braced his foot gently against the floor to halt the turning. Nel peered curiously over his shoulder at the expansive computer panels. Well, that seemed logical enough.

"That's a bit brave of ya, Nel-chan, ta come straight here after killin' Nnoitra." Gin was smiling, as always.

She appeared unflustered, tumbling into Aizen's lap with no concern for her own life. "He had it coming, chauvinizzic bastard…anyway it's not like you've lost a Kwinta. I'll repwace him."

Her master looked down at her with a currently calm expression, but his words were laced with poison. "You seem not to care that you aided our enemies in breaching the castle's defences. Even now there are three shinigami, a Quincy and a human causing havoc in our home."

Nel thought quickly, and beamed her most innocently evil smile. "Nel had amnesia! Besides, dis way is way more fun!"

Aizen laughed and patted her mask with one of his large hands. "Yes, my dear Quinta Espada…it is."

Gin was no longer grinning. "An' if yer thinkin' o' betrayin' us again, just remember that information flows in two directions; an' we got torture chambers. So welcome back, Nel-chan."

The green-haired child looked away at the screen to hide her discomfort. "Oh, hey…" she chirped, trying her hardest to be an unfeeling Hollow like they had always expected of her. "Rukia is fighting Aawon. She's gonna get tentacle-waped."

Ichimaru laughed, and she felt a little safer with his fearful seriousness hidden once again, out of sight.

**o)0(o**

There are fights for survival, and fights for pride. She had little chance of living beyond her fatal, fated meeting with this Espada, and her pride was calling for her to die for the sins she had committed against the man who stood before her at last. Just as she had prayed fruitlessly; hour upon night upon month upon year, for her fukutaicho to live again.

Metastacia had eaten him, body, zanpakuto, memory and all. And Aaroniero had eaten Metastacia. Everything of Shiba Kaien was here. She could no longer lie to herself that she did not recognise him.

She could no longer pretend that she had the will to kill the same friend twice.

Sometimes just letting go is easier.

Life could go on because dead companions could not come back, because nothing could be done _but_ to move forward, even if it was only time dragging you along.

But Kaien had returned, and that rule was now reversed. Rukia's life had halted.

She did nothing to block Aaroniero Arruruerie's next lunge with Kaien's trident. Sode no Shirayuki, weakened by her mistress's desolation, shattered into ice dust under the stabbing points of Nejibana. In the same movement those steel spikes punctured Rukia's body, hoisting her agonisingly into the air where the Espada held her triumphantly. A corpse for a flag. It suited Aizen and his followers well.

Shock shut her body down far too slowly; she was torn asunder by the sensation of being ripped open until the excruciating pain forced her consciousness out of its tortured mind.

In the emptiness of oblivion, she chased her fleeting memories. Catching glimpses of the past so faint that her mind's eye forgot what it had seen even as it turned for a second glance.

_Ukitake-taicho...philosophy...fights for survivalpride..._

_But...think they're one and the same..._

_Both...heart..._

_...lame... -oi!-_

That! That picture had been of Kaien-dono! The ghost she had murdered, the events she allowed to haunt her...just so she would never forget him...

_the bonds between us when we meet...in friendships and in shared pains...our values and our selves...heart..._

_...where...do you think...they are kept...?_

_...never die alone..._

_thank you...now I can leave...my heart here..._

_...with you..._

Words. But more than that, fragments of truth, life, 'heart' as it had happened between them. They were filling her up, sharper and sterner and infinitely stronger than the metal in her lungs. Kaien had spoken those final words to her despite the suffering that killed him - the same trauma of being stabbed straight through by the weapon of a friend.

She, too, would speak; though the damage was too unbearable to truly block or rise above.

"You're still conscious? How admirable - or rather, pitiful."

She no longer saw the face of her senpai. Only a monster, vicious with bloodshed. Blood that dripped from her lips as she coughed up the words that were so much more important than pain.

"I remembered where Kaien's heart is."

Aaroniero flicked her off the end of his trident before she could shear through his head with her broken sword. He knew exactly what she meant by that, imbued as he was with Kaien's philosophies; and the knowledge irritated him. To speak of hearts to Hollows was degrading.

"Let me show you where the rest of him is, then." The Espada sounded displeased; it was bored of toying with her now. Pulling off his left glove, Nejibana tossed away, Aaroniero unveiled his own zanpakuto. In place of a hand, a thick, leech-like tentacle writhed on the end of his arm. Offshoot feelers wriggled all the way along its length.

Rukia would have cringed, but the wounds through her abdomen were occupying her mind more than the bizarre appendages of arrancars. She hauled herself away weakly, leaving a trail of liquids that should have been internal.

Her hearing was fading in and out like her vision. Was the Ninth Espada saying something?

"Devour, Glotonería!"

Reiatsu blasted out of the false-real Kaien's body, and it exploded into a gargantuan mass of bloated, roiling tentacles and formless sacks of flesh. "This is the combined form of the thirty-three thousand, six hundred and fifty Hollows I have eaten. In my Ressurrección I can use all of their powers at once."

_Shit…_

Rukia was once again paralysed by fear. Even if she could have summoned the strength and energy to fight, she could no longer summon the desire.

_Let it be over…_

His attack was like a mountain falling. Until time skipped a beat, and the horrendous onslaught paused.

Sode no Shirayuki, the beautiful snow geisha, her zanpakuto spirit, had materialised.

Completely cloud-white, tinted with delicate blues wherever her indigo blood touched the surface of her skin…eyes like pale blue diamonds and lips a fragment of sky. She dressed in glowing white silks; her kimono sleeves were long and flowing like a child's, to match her name. The sleeve of white snow. Sode no Shirayuki.

The zanpakuto knelt down behind Rukia and wrapped her chilled arms around her.

"Frozen again?"

Time seemed to have stopped, but the shinigami's terror of the lunatic blitzing towards her had not. Dread flooded like ice melt through her veins.

"That's what I like about you, Kuchiki Rukia…" murmured Shirayuki so softly and dangerously into her ear, a glacial femme fatal whose very beauty could kill. The exquisiteness of a snowflake, and the bite of its frost. "You so easily feel the cold avalanche of fear in your soul."

No, time had not stopped. The enemy was approaching sliver by sliver. She tried to back away but the corporeal form of the zanpakuto blocked her escape. She could feel the ground humming beneath her crumpled body. Under the earth where none could see its light, the white moon was hiding. Instinctively she had performed _some no mai_, the first dance.

"Now," the yuki-onna whispered; "share it with them."

Time snapped back into place and the grotesque Espada was bulleting towards her once again. She was trapped in the range of her own attack with no chance to evade because he was already upon her. And once again her sword was shattered.

"Shi-"

"Fu-"

"SHIRAFUNE!" shrieked Rukia, as the full moon filled everything above it with ice, including her and her attacker. The white blade reappeared, sweeping through its element without cutting it.

And she…she felt cold, but she could still move.

The tsukishiro couldn't hold back an Espada for more than a few seconds, but lo, her zanpakuto ghosted through the iceberg and sheared straight through the enemy. It was swift. A single movement.

Everything thawed in an instant, and blood exploded from the arrancar's torso. Made brittle by the sudden cold snap, Aaroniero's glass capsule shattered in a spray of translucent crimson.

The vast chamber flooded with the Hollow's melting corpse. Clinging to her glacier, the exhausted soldier managed a final slash with her sword, severing one of Arruruerie's floating heads in two. The other began to scream for help to Aizen. Its symbiote cursed at her once, and died.

"Sode no Shirayuki…" breathed Rukia, staring at the elegant blade in awe. In the heart of her soul, the snow woman whispered a reply.

_Did you think the third dance existed because I was weak? Do you expect me to shatter in every battle? The white sword, the ghostly blade; is for cutting through ice. And remember, Kuchiki Rukia – you are a shinigami. You are a ghost as well. _

Nodding slowly, as she was lost for words, Kuchiki Rukia laid back and rested her sword against her stomach. Cold heat began to stem the seeping blood, cauterizing her injuries with ice.

"Thank you…Shirayuki…" shivered Rukia, and let go.

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup__!_

"I am the Noveno Espada, Aaroniero - roniniaara - rerunaro - niero Arruruerie - wait for it! – rarariuro - rerukoraniru - sorrirereerongu - rie."

"Die."

**o)0(o**

"You are a ghost as well."

When Rukia hesitated, Shirayuki pulled out a sketchbook and started explaining again with stick figures.

"Look, it's like this:"

The illustration was beautiful in itself, artfully drawn in ferns of frost just like those Jack Frost drew on windows. But it was also totally incomprehensible.

"Wow…you're worse than me…" gasped Rukia in awe. The zanpakuto glared and threw the pad at her.

"I'm never going to step in and save you again, you ungrateful cow. And also, the way you started swearing when he attacked you was just vulgar."

Rukia sweated. Her sword was a mouthier version of Byakuya. "Sorry…Onee-sama…"

**o)0(o**

**Chapter notes:** Had to split up the first Omake because FFN ate it. Okay, there were a lot of references to in-jokes here that only Pippin's Socks will find funny – Aizen's swivelly chair of doom, anyone? The sound track for this chapter was 'Red Moon' by Turin Brakes – look it up. Spot the lyrics. = )

I'm considering rating this as an M, but so far I believe that Bleach has an older readership anyway and I'm mostly mirroring the manga as it is. So it remains T.

We have passed the halfway point of Arc 1, which is now looking at being 10 or 11 chapters long. Thank you for all your feedback, faves and alerts; they keep me inspired. =D

Now feed me reviews. *Opens mouth wide*


	7. Saboteuse

**Hell Butterfly**

**Saboteuse**

**~07~**

**o)0(o**

"Flamenco dancing cyclones with beaks and I nearly got whupped. You?"

"Don't ask…" replied Uryuu, going slightly green and shuddering. "Bad Gothic Lolita and _Infinite Slick_."

"Chad?"

Sado Yasutora stared at his hands, remembering the new white arm that had appeared as inexplicably as the first. The Brazo Izquierdo del Diablo, and its powerful attack performed with the left fist – La Muerte. He was beginning to worry how much of his body would be taken over every time he accessed his abilities. He wondered whose face he had left carved on the white walls of Las Noches.

"It was easy," he said simply, a wealth of detail left unvoiced as usual, but for once on purpose. The teenager was not quite ready to accept the roots of his powers, despite the fact that it was becoming clearer and clearer that it was the limbs of a Hollow with which he fought. When Ichigo scoffed dryly and shook his head, Chad added one more feature. "He had an orange afro."

**o)0(o**

The sound of her crunching was embarrassingly loud in the silent, deserted chamber. Tousen-san must have been busy following the progress of the invaders, because her latest feeding consisted of a few hastily sliced vegetables and a packet of crisps. The wrapping rustled and crackled, glossy plastic colours surreal against the backdrop of imprisoning white sandstone. Now her scatty head was crowded with images of Gin shopping at a convenience store, alongside those of Tousen the pastry chef and Aizen buying intimidating furniture. She laughed inadvertently, imagining Ganju and Hanatarou's faces when the traitor captain popped his head up at their part-time job's till.

She wondered what their boss had thought about their sudden disappearances after the Bounts had left Karakura. Then her musing on common groceries led her to ponder whether her spiritual body would still have periods. Would she need to request Gin for supplies? For that matter she hadn't needed the toilet ever since discarding her corporeal body to the matter-converter on the senkai gate. It seemed that everything she ate was fully absorbed into her soul. Now if that were true, she should just eat Ulquiorra.

It would be a delicious defeat.

Though he would probably taste of despair.

'Despair' brushed far too closely against the ugly realities she was trying to avoid; so she quickly sent her train of thought down a different track, such as how many spare capes Ishida had got through by now. Inoue was used to being alone, and used to the vicious circles of depression that could chase their tails inside her head for days at a time. As a child it had been the fear of her volatile parents; the yearning for their affection and feeling of worthlessness as her brother had carried her away from their choking embraces. Later it had been the isolation of an empty home, eternally absent brother and the ostracism at school for her weird habits and auburn hair. (She'd felt a connection with Ichigo from first sight, probably because his hair was even worse.) Then she had met Tatsuki and thrown herself headlong into the friendship, so overjoyed to be accepted and overprotected all at glorious once. In doing so she had probably stolen Kurosaki's best friend.

After that, she had been blessed with the Shun Shun Rikka. And cursed yet again with the knowledge that she could never match her peers. Ichigo was a powerhouse, Ishida a genius; Chad had hidden depths.

She had temperamental fairies.

She also had no crisps left, so she licked the salt off her greasy fingers and looked around the room guiltily for the act of normalcy. Judging by the distant auras, all the arrancars were gathering in Aizen's vast, sunlit courtyard in the centre of Las Noches. Judging by the distant auras, Karin-chan was heading there too, her heart left behind in some unknown parallel dimension. Judging by the distant auras, Kuchiki Rukia-san was almost dead.

Orihime swallowed the sob but it lurched out of her throat anyway. She shook her head, rubbed her sleeve across her damp eyes. If she crumbled now, she knew she would never stop breaking. She would end up a Hollow without her enemies needing to lift a finger. And maybe her Hollow form would have the flamethrower, caterpillar tracks and cannon she'd designed for Future Robohime!

Inoue was an expert at distracting herself, but it was getting harder with every passing second.

**o)0(o**

Ishida was opening his mouth to enquire after the whereabouts of Abarai Renji, when said shinigami careened around the corner and pelted towards them, legs pumping like pistons.

He was halfway past them before he had even realised they were there.

"RUN RUN RUN!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, flying down the corridor. "There's a herd of Exequias behind me!" The others watched him sprint off in bemusement, leaning round the corner to see what the big deal was.

"They don't look that bad…couldn't you just wipe them out?" Ichigo asked, examining the far-off crowd of identical Hollows. They did not appear to have faces.

Renji paused at the other end of the hallway, jogging on the spot to preserve his momentum. "Gee, thanks for the advice Ichigo, I never thought of that with my _century of experience_. I've already killed two hundred of them – they just multiply!"

He took off again, and wisely, they followed him.

**o)0(o**

Inoue snuck through the blank passageways of Las Noches like an overly conspicuous ninja. At first, her plan of cutting through the walls with Tsubaki's aid and arrowing straight for Kuchiki-san's location had seemed plausible. It was doable, even easy. Stone was nothing compared to the reiatsu-tempered skin of the arrancars. Stone she could actually sever, with a flash of amber magic and the crash of tumbling rubble.

But now it seemed that every time she stepped through a doorway or round a corner she would end up in a totally different section of the fortress. The labyrinth was beginning to close in around her, no pathways remained the same and not knowing where she would end up next was disorientating. As far as she could tell from the movements of her captors, no one had noticed her escape yet, however at this rate it would be a week before she could find and heal Rukia.

She had to get there fast, sure that her ability to reject fate would not work on someone who was already dead. Abandoning all of her laughable caution, Orihime began to run.

Kuchiki-san's aura was still sinking…

**o)0(o**

Unohana graced Kurotsuchi-taicho with her most patient smile. Perhaps if she persisted in doing so it would become true.

Kuchiki-taicho broke the silence first, on some level concerned about the state of his adopted younger sister. "Are you ready yet, Twelfth Captain?"

The man (she assumed he was still human) adjusted an output gauge on a large reiatsu battery, long white fingers prodding industriously at his task. "Don't rush me," he warned in his dry, despising tones. "Or your stomach will purée out of your ears when the Garganta collapses."

"Nice," rumbled Zaraki-taicho. "Bet I could take it."

**o)0(o**

Sprinting through the hallways, she felt the sense of fear and urgency dogging her. Everything was going wrong. She felt haunted even though no arrancars were hunting her, and that was a miracle in itself!

Inoue had gone to Hueco Mundo willingly because there had been no choice, more than that, she could not even consider valuing her friends' lives over her own, and sacrificing them for her own safety. And what kind of protection would that have been? Aizen hadn't needed to blackmail her, it was merely more convenient for him to do so. The decoy battles had probably been used to gather information and gauge the strength of his adversaries, or at least that was what she would do if she were an evil mastermind. And as for why they needed her at all, that remained unapparent. Orihime was becoming certain that the entire spectacle was an elaborate diversion, a divide-and-conquer ploy to split up Seireitei's best fighters.

What had ended up happening anyway?

Her friends had come to rescue her, and now they were dying for their heroism. She hadn't helped at all. She hadn't saved anyone. And she was so sick of just picking up the shattered pieces of her friends, sticking them back together instead of protecting them from harm. But still...who could begrudge a power that might save Rukia-chan, if only she was fast enough? Was it really her place to complain about the priceless gifts she'd been given by chance, when it was her own hesitance holding her back?

Realising how lost in her thoughts she had become, Inoue double-checked the atmosphere to ensure none of her captors had caught on to her little getaway. If she didn't pay attention she was probably going to crash straight into an - OOPH!

A green stone podium struck her ribs painfully, arms bracing against it moments too late. So intent on reaching her friend, and too used to the miles of blank, empty hallways, Inoue was totalled before she knew what hit her. Using it to pull herself up whilst a-tcha-tcha-ing at the dull ache of impact, she felt the cool marble grate under her hands, and paused.

A whisper of energy had escaped from a hairline crack in the stone.

Murky, foreign, tumultuous energy.

Energy she recognised.

Forgetting her bruised torso in a moment of mesmerised curiosity, Orihime began to drag the lid of the plinth open. A disc swung out into empty air, hanging there on a hidden pivot. There was no visible opening, so she repeated the action until several of the stone circles spiralled around each other. Beneath the last, nestled in a small silk-lined hollow, was a dilemma of life-endangering proportions.

"Hougyoku…" whispered Inoue, feeling her hands slip through an invisible barrier much like they had effortlessly breached Hacchi's. Her fingers closed over the cool crystal panes that housed the Orb of Distortion. A helpless laugh escaped her throat as a sob. It was exactly what she had wanted.

This kind of opportunity could only be called serendipity.

Ah…but, this kind of choice could only be called pitiful.

Because Rukia would surely die in the time it took to rid Aizen of the Hougyoku, and so save the world. Rukia, the most important person ever to change Ichigo's life – and through the butterfly effect, Inoue's own. How could she face him knowing that she had willingly abandoned such a precious friend? Hands slow and heavy, she placed the sphere back upon the pedestal. Her fingers fidgeted emptily on the rim of the podium. _This is a war. There are casualties. Kuchiki-chan would want me to do this. Far more people will die if I don't._ A cloud of indecision hung over her, prelude to indirect murder.

"Tsubaki," called Orihime softly, praying she would be able to sabotage the source of Aizen's army quickly. That she wouldn't screw up, again; _again_ when her closest friends were in danger. Time, time was whisking away.

Light flashed in the corner of her eye and a tiny, winged ninja warrior swooped around her. She glanced at the Hougyoku and looked at him questioningly. His equally silent reply was to smack her on the head.

"Ow!" she shouted. "What w-"

"Don't give me that look!" barked the pugnacious fairy. "That 'ooh, do you think you can cut it, Tsubaki, are you strong enough' look! Me, I can cut anything! I'm awesome, and don't you forget it! The problem is you!"

Inoue mewled sadly, rubbing her bump. Of course. She was always the problem.

She started to shuffle away in defeat.

"Oi! Where are you going?"

"But Tsubaki-san, you said-"

He hit her again. "Never mind that, pay attention to what I'm saying!"

Inoue's eyes began to spin in gentle bewilderment.

"How badly do you want this thing destroyed? How much does it mean to you?"

She snapped to attention. "Everything!"

"Even if Rukia dies in the meantime?"

"This is more important!" And saying the words out loud forced them to be true.

"Even if you get the crap beaten out of you for disobeying Aizen?"

"Yes!" shouted back Orihime, tears in her eyes, because her overactive imagination could well predict how much that would hurt. Tsubaki winged back and forth before her, a tiny, angry sergeant-major inspecting his cadet.

"Is your heart totally committed, you pathetic little pansy?!"

"Yes!" roared Inoue, taking the initiative and pointing irately at the Hougyoku. "Tsubaki! Koten Zanshun! I REJECT!"

There was a blaze of golden light as though the sun had suddenly risen within the shadowy castle. Tsubaki pumped his fist, a full-on action pose mirrored by his mistress, and charged.

He pinged off the Hougyoku's crystal shell without leaving a single scratch.

"Mayday! Mayday!" he wailed, spiralling away with a bent wing.

Inoue deflated, no longer feeling fired up and capable of anything. Even her most determined shot had failed. "…I'm sorry, Tsubaki - are you okay?"

"Shut up!" he replied from the floor, crotchety. "You can be way more than resolute than that! Come on, this matters! Aizen's totally crossed the line: he stabbed Toushiro, he trashed Soul Society, cut up Ichigo, nearly vaporised Rukia, let his arrancars kill loads of innocent humans and-"

"I know," answered the young girl. "I know what he's done, I was there." She wrapped her arms around her ribs again, feeling a cool shiver on her skin. "Ayame, Shun'ou."

She glared at the Hougyoku, finally setting aside her deep-rooted terror and letting the dark anger at how her friends had been abused well up. She found it hard to summon righteous anger. After a lifetime of bullying from parents, peers and enemies, her inferiority complex tended to shy away from conflict; whereas acts of healing more easily gave her a feeling of being worthy to wield her powers.

Powers that, undeniably, were capable of being beyond limit.

If only she could live up to that.

She probably couldn't, but on the behalf of those she cared about she would fight like a lion, and tear that smug bastard Aizen to shreds. _Rawr._ It was time to make a stand.

"I don't think the Hougyoku will break, Tsubaki. It's not a normal substance."

"You're telling me; it's harder than freaking diamonds!"

Orihime swept him into her palms from his crash landing site in the corner of the chamber. "Then we'll just unmake it," she said firmly, as if it were so simple. "Nothing can withstand time, even if time is going backwards. We," she paused, blotting tears from her tired grey eyes as the chance to save Rukia slipped further and further away. "We can definitely do this." Her voice was not as loud as before, yet neither did it quaver or doubt. _I have never failed to heal._

_I can make a difference here._

There were no clocks in Hueco Mundo, but she could still hear the tick-tick of escaping time. Was Aizen alerted when the plinth was opened? Was he on his way now, to crush her?

"Souten Kisshun, I reject."

Two fragments of her soul leapt forwards and spun a golden shield from empty air. They hovered over the Hougyoku, bathing it in the glow that could nullify any action, reverse any wound. Yet the midnight orb reflected no light, merely drinking it up and hiding it away in the darkness of its sleek surface. There was no indication that her supernatural forces were affecting it. Orihime chose to ignore this worrying fact and press on, feeding reiatsu into her little avatars and half-melded to them, mentally directing the phenomena rejection.

At length a thin filament lifted from the sphere, squirming weakly. She wondered if it had been taken back in time or space to Karin-chan's degradation. Then too, it had changed in texture and shape to cling to Aizen's fingertips. Reassured that her Shun Shun Rikka were working successfully, Inoue allowed her mind to wander.

Naturally, it wandered to betrayal.

A teardrop splashed on the gently shining amber ellipse. It sizzled, evaporating away like Rukia's life, burning a fresh hole in the girl's heart as it went.

No, wait.

The sizzling noise had not come from the saltwater still crawling down her hibiscus shield.

Inoue's head flicked from side to side, eyes desperately scouring the hall. Las Noches was silent, always. Las Noches was dead. Sound equalled danger.

Her hands clenched around the wounded Tsubaki, not heeding his protests. When no clear enemy resented itself, she turned fully, peering out through both the intended and makeshift exits. Nothing. Nothing but the serpent-hiss of impending peril.

A point of light appeared on the wall behind her. It was joined by several more, quickly covering the ceiling, floor, every available surface. Laser beams grew out of the doors and crisscrossed, blocking all escape. And everywhere, long sharp needles of burning bloody light were creeping out of the stone. They were carved from a reiatsu that was the muddy red of dried blood, as if this constricting iron maiden had been used many times before.

Fire pricked her soles. Inoue recoiled, sandals cut through effortlessly. When she quickly ran out of ground to stand on she tried to climb the green plinth before her feet were decimated, but even that wouldn't help her for long. The crimson pins kept growing. In jerky, irregular spurts they shuddered towards her. _Stab. Stab. Stab._

Orihime summoned her shield with as much breath as she could squeeze out of her panicked lungs. But it could only protect her on one side, not matter how all three of them strained to increase the barrier's area. They were surrounded flawlessly. If she focused ahead of her then she would be punctured from behind. When she covered her back she had to watch death's erratic approach ahead.

"Baigon! Hinagiku! Lily! Can't you change the shield's shape?" When each cried out tremulous negatives, she whimpered and hid her head behind her arms. The instinct would do nothing to save her life. It was merely an empty comfort. Tsubaki's tiny hands hammered against her crown, again crushed between her shaking fingers.

He must have hammered some sense of inspiration into her, for she abruptly ceased cowering and looked up, eyes glinting gold in sudden determination. "Tsubaki," snapped the girl, brusque. "Join the shield."

"_What?!"_

"Now."

"I can't-"

"Right now for _god's sake or we're going to die!_" Her voice cracked with terror, as she realised just how young and small and feeble she really was. Trying to cross Aizen. Insane. Leave it to the superheroes, to Ichigo with his ridiculous reiatsu and Ishida with his lifetime of training. What had she seriously expected of herself? To suddenly leap in power like all her friends did? No! Of course such luck wouldn't befall the only one of them closest to the traitor and his soul-destroying marble.

Tsubaki faltered for the briefest moment after she released him from her clenching fist. "I probably won't be able to change back after this," he warned her quietly, small voice barely audible over the crackling spikes.

"Please," grated out Orihime, jolting away from a particularly long needle that had scorched the underside of her arm.

Subdued, there was a familiar flash of streetlamp yellow as Tsubaki darted between rods of claret energy and took up a position opposite his spiritual siblings. He frowned deeply, concentrating on forming and rejecting only one side of his barrier. It should be possible…

Three more triangles rippled into being, each latching onto one side of the original shield. Seconds before the spears made the final lunge to impale their trapped trespasser, every vivid edge fused into an impenetrable pyramid. An insistent, lyrical hum began to fill the room, as Inoue's energy calmly and confidently expanded. She laughed, brittle but genuine. The huge spikes scraped the bright shields uselessly, not even scratching them.

The girl felt ecstatic. They had survived. She was alive.

"You'll have to admit I'm part of you eventually," growled Tsubaki darkly. She heard the words, but no admonition could kill her joy at that moment. With a shield this strong, no one would be able to stop her from destroying the Hougyoku.

She looked down at it with something like a smile on her face. It looked less like the deepest void of space, now, and more like an ultra-condensed storm. Perhaps its obliteration would be completed soon.

As it sunk in that she was succeeding, as it grew more and more clear that she _could_ contribute to the winning of this war, her heart was rising in her chest. She felt light, even bubbly. The strain of sustaining six fey beings rejecting the universe at full power was becoming less and less of a chore. So this was confidence, resolution, freedom from doubt.

This was how her soul was meant to feel.

**o)0(o**

Ambling through the halls at a leisurely pace, Stark and Lilynette were heeding Aizen's call for all arrancars to gather at the central coliseum of Las Noches. At their own speed, of course.

Passing the site of Mosqueda's defeat, Lilynette caught sight of the colossal calling-card Sado Yasutora had engraved into the wall with his devil's fist. She froze.

"Hey, Stark!" she shouted, without taking her eyes off the forty-foot high skull. "Come look at this!"

Stark obeyed the Fraccion; then felt himself break into a wide, heartfelt smile. "So that guy's back, is he?"

They shared a moment of silent reflection.

"Do you remember when…"

"Yeah…"

**o)0(o**

He appeared at the door without warning. Orihime could not see him through the dense needles attempting to drill through her new Shiten Kesshun, but the punch of his livid reiatsu made her bolt upright, standing to petrified attention as she was caught red handed.

"Don't falter!" Lily urged her, the golden light flickering almost imperceptibly.

Inoue could barely draw breath. Aizen wanted her dead. And what Aizen, who had secretly conquered Hueco Mundo during his tea breaks as a Gotei captain, wanted; Aizen got.

The lasers that crosshatched the doorway were fragile icicles that shattered at his touch. In the same manner, he destroyed all crimson lances standing between him and the object of his wrath. His pace as he approached was soft and smooth. It belied his rage.

"Privaron Needle Prisonn."

"Sir," answered the former Espada curtly, reforming from the shattered spikes that littered the floor. Its mask made three white bands curving over its face, and its spiny red hair clattered gently with every movement, as if it wore a skinned porcupine in place of a scalp. Born in something close to the first generation of arrancars, Needle had been a powerhouse at the time. But the slow-moving, ambush style of its resurrección had swiftly driven it from the higher echelons of Aizen's army.

Stepping alongside the Hollow, said warlord lashed out in an attack too fast to track. Needle Prisonn reeled backwards, mask cracking with a loud _snap_ and bones crunching – blood splattered.

"Worthless." Aizen laid down his judgment of utter derision. "What use are soldiers weaker than I am? I did not come here to babysit Hueco Mundo!"

Not meeting Inoue's eyes or glancing to the arrancar now sprawled across the floor, he focused only upon the shield keeping her from certain death.

"Hmn. That_ is_ far stronger than before." He had been a little hasty in killing Needle Prisonn. But never mind. There would always be another Hollow.

Aizen reached out and brushed the surface of the force field lightly. The fault line that followed his fingertips spread until the pyramid shattered into shimmering dust. He had not even needed to push.

Baigon, Tsubaki, Lily and Hinagiku scattered. Orihime choked on her own fear, too paralyzed to flee. Not that she would have gotten far – he backhanded her before she could blink. The smack echoed off the walls. When it faded, the real beating commenced.

Aizen Sosuke's punches were swift, calculated and brutal. Although he held back the perfect amount, to ensure that his hostage remained bruised, bloody, but never broken beyond repair; there was an unnerving undercurrent of enjoyment beneath his calm expression. His emotions, always deeply hidden like the glowing fish that plumb the black oceans, were surely being vented. Because aside from smug laughter at his paltry enemies, or bitingly sarcastic affection towards his dear Espada, Sosuke never revealed _anything_.

"You said that your life belonged to me and you would obey," he reminded her coldly, as aching heat spread through her new contusions. "Perhaps it slipped your mind."

She was no longer listening. Inoue stared numbly out of blackened eyes at the corpse on the floor. Its dingy blood was still seeping out, staining her white sandals the dark red of the recently marching spikes.

Barely a command breathed, fractured hand tilted towards the cadaver at the slightest degree; yet two miniature angels leapt into being anyway.

It did not matter, that this was an enemy. She did not even consider the vicious slaughter this arrancar had almost visited upon her.

Orihime had gone beyond good and evil now.

All she saw was pain. And that was so contrary to her soul she could not stop herself from moving to heal it.

Aizen waited, suddenly as amiable as his false persona had ever been. It was worth a moment or two of his time… To learn whether this bizarre child could resurrect the dead.

**o)0(o**

_Arrancar Cup!_

**Pansy vs Inanimate Object**

In a distant grocery store, Urahara gave Tessai a troubled glance and sighed. "The Hougyoku is more dangerous than we know…"

In a low-lit treasure chamber, Inoue took up a karate stance. The Hougyoku was resisting her attempts to unmake it. "Your Hougyoku Fu is dangerous," she taunted it in a deep, dramatic voice; "but you will be no match for Robohime! Haiiii- URK!"

A bloodstained orb rolled out of the portal to the chamber, mysteriously moving under its own power. Standing in the corridor, Aizen looked down at it condescendingly. "Your pitiful rebellion is entertaining," he told it; "but it ends now."

Moments later, his army heard the dying screams of their leader. "OH NO OH MOTHER SAVE ME OH GOD NO ARRGGHHhhh-_gurgle_-…"

It was not long before the Spirit King himself was confronting the Breakdown Sphere. "Laughable," he replied to the silent threat; "but I shall honour your challenge."

They were his last words.

Out in Seireitei, an orange-haired shinigami twitched on the ground. He had been trampled when the black marble passed through Soul Society on its destructive path to heaven. He raised one claw-like hand in a begging gesture. "W-why…?" croaked Ichigo.

Urahara popped up out of nowhere, laughing maniacally at his world dominion. A green-and-white striped crown was perched on top of his blonde hair at a stylish angle. He grinned, spinning the Hougyoku on the tip of his finger.

"Why, Kurosaki-kun? BECAUSE THIS WAS MY PLAN ALL ALONG! MWAHAHAHAHAAA!"

**o)0(o**

**Chapter Notes:**_ Sorry about the long wait! Christmas is time-consuming – but oh so worth it, of course! =D_

_The only thing in this chapter that you won't have heard before is 'Shiten Kesshun' which is not too hard. Unlike Santen Kesshun meaning 'triple heavenly linking shield' it just goes up one to quadruple, courtesy of Tsubaki's demotion. _

_Next chapter is the biggie. R&R!_


	8. Tenebra Shirojos

**Hell Butterfly**

**Tenebra Shirojos**

**~08~**

**o)0(o**

"What the hell is this?" asked Ichigo, walking slowly into the centre of the amphitheatre. High above him white clouds were skidding beneath the surface of a bright blue sky. The vivid colours were almost blinding after the countless hours of monotone darkness. His hand stretched back, anchoring itself to Zangetsu in the face of a thousand enemies. They surrounded him, reclining on the white sandstone steps of the arena, relaxed in their home environment. Some were whispering to each other. They chattered behind their hands as they watched him gawp.

Ichigo was tall, young, and had hair that would put a freshly peeled carrot to shame. He was in the somewhat early-to-arrive prime of his life; or afterlife, considering that he was in soul a vaizard already. He had shot from terrifying rookie to intimidating elite in the space of a few months.

But when the opponent was Aizen, and the battleground was his fortress, the shinigami substitute no longer found that impressive at all.

His reputation in battle could not possibly be the reason for this shower of attention. Realising that his friends had been separated from him during the mad dash away from a hundred-odd Exequias, the fifteen-year-old Kurosaki came under the distinct impression that he had been singled out.

Singled out for a particularly nasty death.

Ichigo spotted his waylaid friends among the crowd. Renji was being held by Grimmjaw, though the glare on the arrancar's face made it clear the blue-haired brawler would rather be fighting Ichigo right then. Chad was restrained by a dark-skinned man with white thorns tracking the centre line of his bald head. Ishida had an Espada's arm round his neck; the flamboyantly pink-haired Hollow seemed to wear purple opera glasses in place of a mask. Every one of them had a proto-Cero burning in their hands, ready to rip straight through the spines of his comrades at the slightest struggle. About to race to their defence, Ichigo realised a lull had fallen over the stadium and swivelled back to find out why.

His host had arrived. Flanked by Tousen and Gin, alongside a selection of elite Espada, Aizen strode into the arena with his usual air of calm control. How he enforced it was another matter. There - there behind Ulquiorra and in front of some imposing blonde woman - was Inoue.

He felt a simultaneous rush of relief that she was alive, and horror at the opponents he would have to go through to reach her. Perhaps he had signed up for this but still...all at once? That was...not healthy.

Her ginger hair was how he recognised her in the strange white dress, because her face was no longer that of Inoue Orihime, scatterbrain extraordinaire. Her face was a black and blue mess. From the way she hunched and flinched with every step, he guessed the rest of her was the same. His stomach twisted a little. He couldn't imagine her doing anything to deserve such brutal punishment, which meant mindless violence was the source of the injuries. Right hand tightening on Zangetsu's bandaged hilt, the other drifted up to shadow his eyes. Or so it seemed.

From nought to bankai vaizard to halfway out the door with all friends in tow in half a second, the fifteen-year-old had elected flight over fight for the first time since karate lessons against Tatsuki when he was seven. Forget fighting an entire army of hyper-powered zombies single-handed, Ichigo just wanted to survive the next ten seconds.

Sadly ten seconds is more than enough time for sonido to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

It was as though nothing had happened. Chad, Renji and Ishida were back under the watchful eyes of the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Espadas, whilst Inoue had been retrieved by Ichimaru-taicho.

Ichigo glared hotly, dropping the shards of his mask on the stone floor. So they would have to fight it out. Well, he'd done it before; and he was just going to have to do it again. But for god's sake, he came away in more pieces every time. One of these days the cost was going to get too high.

But as he watched his friends struggle so far away from freedom, he knew that day had not come yet.

Gin had returned to Aizen's side, studying the enemy reaper in a relaxed fashion through nearly-closed eyes. He smiled pleasantly; chin resting on Inoue's hair and arms hanging loosely over her shoulders. She seemed alarmed by the familiarity of the dangerous man behind her.

"Whatcha doin' takin' my Ran-chan replacement away, Ichigo-kun?"

Hearing this, Aizen gave them a sideways glance, noting that Inoue did indeed resemble Matsumoto-fukutaicho. "Regrets, Gin?" he asked quietly, also smiling.

"Naw, just nostalgia..." The pale head tilted up in Kurosaki's direction. "You gotta stick around, Ichigo, or the fun part won' happen."

As Tousen muttered that the roundabout manner of killing him was unnecessary, said teenager began to scan the arena for danger. Ha. It would be quicker to look for where danger _wasn't_. Whatever the traitors of Soul Society and leaders of Hollows considered fun could only spell agony for him. Though, to be fair, he too had consorted with arrancars for his own ends. The only difference, he supposed as he examined the endless ranks of white-clothed human shaped monsters, was whether the arrancar was Grimmjaw or Nel.

Who, come to think of it, seemed to be standing between Aizen and a gormless-looking blond kid. He blinked. Straight after killing Nnoitra, she'd run straight back to her master's side? It made some kind of sense...after all, she would never have been accepted back in Soul Society with him, nor could he have brought himself to 'purify' her soul... but still the image was a little disturbing. Nel beside Aizen. What if she puked on him or challenged him to Eternal Tag? Her child persona wouldn't last five seconds in Las Noches.

"At least you had the sense not to challenge me head-on," said Aizen suddenly, jogging Ichigo back to full attention after the revelation that Neliel Tu Oderschvank had abandoned him. His eyes were condescending, and as his opponent had never seen him play the personable captain, that came as no surprise. "Your caution is promising, though I see you are now considering taking on all of us at once."

Ichigo was almost surprised, but then again there were few other options for getting out of there. Aizen's apparent precognizance was probably nothing more than a gimmick to scare his enemies.

The guy hardly needed the gimmick for that. He was doing fine with just the horde of arrancars.

"Fear not, ryoka boy. I only have one opponent for you. I picked her personally. After all, your little gang has taken out several of my pawns, a tower and a bishop." He referred to Iceringer and Demoura, Cirucci, Gantenbainne and Dordonii, Aaronieres and Nnoitra. Patting Nel's skull-mask with a slight smile, he continued his chess analogy. "And although my knight has been returned to me, I believe it's time to send out the queen. Please do not take this as a compliment, though." The smiled tightened into something cruel and empty. "You may have incredible potential, but it is still just that – wasted potential. Your death now is in the name of entertainment only."

Ichigo gulped in slight horror and wished they would get on with it. Fighting was fine; it was the suspense he hated. The longer he spent imagining a bad end, the less resolve he would have for Zangetsu to draw strength from.

Gin pretended to search the room for something, not finding it. "Shame. Rukia-chan must've popped her clogs." He sounded chirpy, just like the day when he had reminded Rukia how to feel terror on Penitence Bridge.

And now Ichigo felt the blessed release from fear, and the welcome rush of livid rage. It flooded him.

"Bring it on then," snarled the reaper, pointing Zangetsu at his enemies as though he were the one calling all the shots. "I'll kill anyone you think you can spare."

"I'm not expecting to lose. It would be traditional to make you a wager, such as 'kill so and so and I'll let you all go'. But honestly, you have no chance. So I merely ask you to give us a show." With a nod to his Quatro Espada, Aizen signalled that Ichigo's newest nemesis should step out from the crowd.

The arrancar moved forwards and sideways, another chess move as the queen was revealed. The boy stared from one to the other.

They both had pale skin, though Ulquiorra's was ashen whereas this new Hollow's was blinding paper-white. They both had jaw-length black hair, and morose eyes. Neither smiled. The only differences were height, gender, age, and the fact that Schiffer's smaragdine irises and tears were nowhere to be seen. There was no emerald to make up for the lack of colour elsewhere with this arrancar. She was completely monotone.

"Who's this," scoffed Ichigo; "Ulquiorra's little sister?"

The Espada paused. "Not mine," he answered quietly, as Inoue jerked against Gin's suddenly choking grip. "This is Tenebra Shirojos."

Several of the Hollows were grinning widely now, leaning forwards in anticipation. It made their target feel claustrophobic with so many enemies to keep track of. But the new member of their ranks remained passive, lifeless.

Ichigo made an uncertain movement, and tossed a slow Getsuga Tensho from the tip of Zangetsu. The spaced-out child-Hollow frowned slightly and flickered away. Behind her, Ulquiorra dispelled the blast with a cero of equal mass.

Growling, Ichigo decided to get this over with. There was no point in waiting for her to show off her skills, and there was no point in being merciful when every defeated Hollow would have a replacement in millisecond. His reiatsu began to gather and swirl, trapping him in a twister of blue energy. Fighting a child was despicable, but in Hueco Mundo there was nothing to say she wasn't a thousand years old already.

The empty girl blinked, sensing his intent, and stretched out a hand like a blind man groping for support. A shadow whistled past his ear and exploded several metres behind him.

What was that? Was that bala? Or a cero, or some unique power? Growing a little more serious, the shinigami substitute kicked off into shunpo, circling her in an instant and firing off a quick succession of blazing blue arcs. They converged in the centre, right on target with a resounding sonic boom. When the air cleared no remains were visible. But the Kurosaki had been in this game long enough to know people were never that lucky. He turned on the spot, searching her out.

At the far end of the stadium, Tenebra Shirojos rubbed her arms uncomfortably, still deciding whether to fight or not. The choice was barely conscious. Rather her instincts sought out danger, and if there was sufficient she would destroy it by reflex.

"Do you even speak?!" taunted Ichigo. "Have you got a brain, or is that Hollow too?!"

The arrancar turned, the face became visible, and Ichigo was reminded of the hole bored straight through the centre of the girl's forehead, and out the back of her skull. He laughed briefly. Perhaps that had been in poor taste. But then he was barely paying attention, completely distracted by the knowledge that he would never be allowed to walk out of here. He was more interested in scouting for another opportunity to steal his friends back and run.

He was certain he could do it. He'd moved fast enough to parry a million cherry blossom blades before now.

It just didn't help that Zangetsu's bankai only awarded him that level of speed...if the direction was _towards_ battle. The stoic man despised retreat, no matter how insane the opposing force was.

"...One..." croaked the girl. It was the croak of a person who had just crawled out of a waterless desert.

"We couldn' really teach 'er ta talk..." mentioned Gin cheerfully, still gagging Orihime with the crook of his elbow. "She's pretty recent, ya know, it might get better in time."

"One two..." whispered the child mournfully, though her eyes were detached and her expression blank. Shirojos did not seem to realise she was speaking. "...One-two...?"

"The next word's 'three'," hollered Grimmjaw, punching Renji to illustrate the point. "One, two, three, ya geddit!"

Hallibel smirked behind her collar. "She only needs to know 'zero'," said the woman in a low voice. "Her name is all she needs to respond to."

Yammy overheard her and grunted, expression ugly. "Espada Zero ain't no way her name. The Cero Espada position is _taken_, for fuck's sake."

"Get over it," replied Stark genially, putting an end to the matter.

"One-two...three..." said the arrancar slowly, sprinting towards Ichigo with an echo-step and drawing a short dagger-like zanpakuto. He blocked just in time, surprised to feel little force behind the blow. The girl darted away again.

Out of patience, Ichigo planted his feet on the floor and shoved his reiatsu into his black sword. Zangetsu began to hum, bloodthirsty and eager to throw itself into a proper fray. He dragged a claw-like hand over his face, gleaming white bone and the red slashes of his mask left behind.

Tenebra Shirojos picked up on his change in attitude, and the white eyes glared in answer. Shadow-matter began to flicker around her small form. The right hand held the taito dagger uselessly, but the left was moulding a silver-grey Gran Rey Cero.

Inoue wrenched herself away from Gin and shouted desperately to Ichigo through lips that cracked and bled. The former captain let her go. Perhaps he was looking forward to the boy's reaction when she told him…

"DON'T!"

The zanpakuto had already bit deep into Tenebra's sword when the voice rang out. Shards of metal screeched and snapped off the arrancar's short blade. Alarmed, he spun to face Orihime; afraid they might be murdering her right under his eyes. Instead she was trying to run towards him, screaming, frantic. When she told him just who he was fighting…

"KARIN! IT'S KARIN!! DON'T KILL HER KUROSAKI-KUN - _SHE'S KARIN-CHAN!!!_"

**o)0(o**

It was soft, smoother than spider-silk, and the shimmering mint-green of frosted mistletoe. Rukia moved her head slightly to nuzzle into this delicate fabric - so heavenly after her harrowing battle - but the movement send a jagged lance of pain shooting through her neck and into her body, where it only multiplied.

Oh yes. That harrowing battle. The one in which she had been spitted like a hog roast. How was she still alive again?

The fabric was the answer. The fabric, with its refreshing fragrance and healing touch, was her Nii-sama's highly treasured and immensely expensive Scarf of Something or Other.

Her head was muggy. She didn't have to remember. Said scarf had saved Renji's life at some point, anyway. The important fact was that Nii-sama was here, and that meant she was safe. So long as he didn't make a habit of endorsing her death. Nii-sama...would protect her...

She began to drift asleep, when a shadow fell over her.

"Nii-sama?" croaked the woman, peeling a darkly shadowed eye open. She looked horrendous, blood loss had sapped her of all colour; her torso was oddly swollen. All muscles had attempted to constrict and stem the flow of her life essence along the path the trident had taken through her. As a spirit being, a shinigami could survive a great deal of damage, but today was pushing it. Pooled blood on the floor around her was staining the edges of Byakuya's carefully draped veil.

"As soon as you are capable of standing we will be leaving." He did not waste time in greeting her or asking how she was taking the pain. With back ramrod straight and arms folded in something approaching insecurity, he was preoccupied by their hostile environment. When she whimpered in a premature attempt to sit up, he frowned and knelt beside her on one knee. "All of Aizen's forces are currently gathered in the epicentre of the castle. Among them are the auras of all your friends. Whilst our presence is shielded we remain safe, however inattention is a flimsy defence to rely upon."

She had rarely heard him speak so much. It was a pity her exhausted brain was garbling most of what he said. She felt like her head was underwater.

"Kurotsuchi-taicho is stationed by the faux-Garganta we used to reach Hueco Mundo in preparation for our escape. Zaraki-taicho is waiting within a special barrier in case his brute force is required." Byakuya was debriefing her in the manner of the efficient captain he was. More used to his aloof fraternal behaviour, Rukia could barely understand what was making him so talkative. "Unohana-taicho, as the most experienced and skilled captain on this mission, will be undertaking any rescue attempts should that become an option."

His sister blinked. Anything else hurt too much. His attitude suddenly grew far more chilled. "Your companions are surrounded by Hollows in the heart of Aizen's territory. You will be our only recovery from this shambles. Do not expect to see them again."

Rukia clutched at his arm and spluttered, attempting to say the precious names Renji, Inoue, Ichigo, Ishida; Chad all through a mouthful of stale blood.

He looked down at her, and there was no softness in him, yet unimaginable words still crept from his mouth. "At least it was you, if any."

Byakuya almost felt guilt at her distraught face. He stooped to pick her up, eliciting a damp scream. She was in no way ready to be moved. But there was no safety here, so he cradled her as gently as possible and flash-stepped out of that blood-slicked and icy chamber.

**o)0(o**

Ichigo stared at his foe again in total disbelief. Short, Karin's height. Black hair, a little more ragged, but similar. But the eyes weren't lazy and sarcastic, they were sharp and angular. The mouth was overly wide and filled with needled piranha teeth – Karin's smile was relaxed and warm. Her skin was tanned and scuffed from football, not this blank geisha-white. But none of that was proof of anything.

Most importantly, vitally crucial…Karin was alive. Karin was alive and safe at home and far, far from Hueco Mundo and monsters and Aizen-fucking-Sosuke. His sister did _not _have a gaping hole in her head, nor a tiara-like mask remnant fused to her head, nor a zanpakuto she didn't even know how to use. Karin was at home, with Yuzu and Oyaji.

One-two. _One two_. The numbers echoed in his head, familiar.

Ichi ni.

_Ichi-nii._

It was her.

The happy illusions came crashing down, and Ichigo crumpled into the white dirt with them.

**o)0(o**

He had fallen into his inner world, clinging to the slippery windowpanes as the wind whipped up a storm.

"Why?" roared Zangetsu, eyebrows furrowed and black robe billowing in the gale. "Why do you hesitate, Ichigo? Why do you falter? Why do you doubt me?"

Zangetsu's voice was harsh, angry; Ichigo could hear an immense tide of disappointment rolling beneath the words. "Have I bound myself for all eternity to a coward? Did you lie when you showed me your soul was courageous?"

But the boy was frozen. "I...I can't! That's my sister!"

"All the more reason not to abandon her to a thousand years of despair, Ichigo!"

Ichigo screwed up his face and screamed in refusal. "I've already stabbed my mother for you! I can't do this again!"

Zangetsu was now sombre, a shade closer to comforting. "You knew that was only an illusion, and you know that this is only a shell."

He shook his head, black sword slipping out of his weak grip. "No. No, that's Karin. She's not just a Hollow, she's an arrancar. And that means..."

"It doesn't mean anything!" cackled his bleached mirror image, thrashing a white blade around cheerfully. Some small part of Ichigo recognised this as a bad sign - he was losing control. They were falling out of balance.

"A big brother can never tell his little sister, 'I'll kill you'." He was recalling those life-ruling words he had shouted at Inoue Sora when it was Orihime's life at stake. "I was born first so that I could protect her and Yuzu." The inner and outer worlds seemed layered. 'Tenebra Shirojos' was visible, reflected in the glass all around him. He stared at his washed-out sibling helplessly. To be honest, there was little recognisable as Karin, because even if the face and height were the same; Karin was defined by her _vivacity_. This ghost had none.

But the knowledge built an impenetrable wall in his mind. He could not pass it. He could not bring himself to hurt Karin.

"Fine," hissed his Hollow self, sounding far too eager. "I'll do it for you."

"Is it better to be wielded by a fearless monster than a cowardly knight?" The zanpakuto's question was not rhetorical. He truly could not decide.

**o)0(o**

At a short distance, Aizen watched Ichigo's internal turmoil with gloating eyes. "As predicted, his energies have gone haywire." Ulquiorra looked at his master with his typical stoic expression, nodding silently. The ryoka Kurosaki made no secret of the fact that the various divisions of his soul were currently at civil war. Each of their distinct auras was flaring out of his body in a disturbingly independent manner. The Plus, the Minus, and the Blade.

"I expected the trash to tear itself apart before we had to stoop to killing him," murmured the Quatro Espada.

Barragan rumbled an agreement, examining the boy's spirit with his Soul Inspection ability. "His Hollow is far stronger than he is."

Aizen gave this one moment of consideration. "Worth recruiting?"

"Raw power aside, I doubt it has the mental capacity to fight for any other king but itself."

In the centre of the coliseum, the fighter seemed to have overcome his shock.

Ichigo staggered towards his little, fragile sister, a puppet with frayed strings. She was still waving her taito uselessly - she had never held it before - and he was still oozing three separate reiatsus that should have been fused as one. For that reason, and quite simply the immense gap in power between the two Kurosakis, Aizen was unconcerned as Ichigo stumbled within striking distance of the vulnerable Ojos.

Until the brat suddenly got his act together and slammed Zangetsu into her side. There was an explosion of perfectly melded Hollow, Shinigami and Zanpakuto synergy.

**o)0(o**

_Arrancar Cup!_

Aizen: This sunny dome in a world of darkness may remind you of the Truman Show.

Ichigo: *non-committal grunt*

Aizen: Well it's true! Your entire life has been an orchestrated, choreographed, farcical construct!

Ichigo: THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!!

Aizen: You've been risking death trying to save perfectly safe actresses!

Ichigo: THAT'S MADNESS!!!

Aizen: You're only here for entertainment! You have fangirls that enjoy watching your pain!!!

Ichigo: THAT'S…actually that explains a lot…

Aizen: But the bad news is - your inner Hollow Hichigo has even MORE fangirls than you!

Ichigo: ...N O O O O O O O O O O O!!!!!

**o)0(o**

GLADIATOR GAMI

My name is Ichigo Kurosaki, commander of the ryoka soldiers, substitute shinigami for Karakura town, brother to a dead sister, son of a murdered mother and I can't remember the rest of the damn quote.

**o)0(o**

**Chapter Notes:**_ It got huge again! This chapter has actually been split in half. Shout outs to Pippin's Socks for the Gladiator omake, and to Nezzie (OhBreadsticks) for helping me figure out Karinspada's name. _

_Tenebra is Portuguese for shadow, Shirojos is shiro – white in Japanese and ojos – eyes in Spanish. So Karin's arrancar name means white-eyed shadow. : )_

_Please review! People often look at stories based on review count, so let's make it impressive and introduce more people to Hell Butterfly! Woo!_


	9. Pyrrhic Victory

**Hell Butterfly**

**Pyrrhic Victory**

**~09~**

**o)0(o**

There was an explosion of perfectly melded Hollow, Shinigami and Zanpakuto synergy.

Tenebra was tossed away like a skeleton leaf in a storm. White blood splashed across the floor, barely visible. Back in the centre of the arena her brother coughed for air, strained by his Herculean effort to end this emotional torture as fast as inhumanly possible.

His bitter hopes were futile.

With the hiss of swelling flesh, deep wounds filled as swiftly as Ichigo's own, when he too was overtaken by his inner demon. Faster, in fact. He viewed his Hollow form as being at Adjuchas level, given its thick lizard-like tail. Other than its tail, he wasn't sure what he looked like at those times. Yet Karin was clearly far beyond this. The only concession to Hollowification she bore was the thin tiara of jagged teeth and her colourless skin. And the same instant regeneration of wounds.

The pitch-black hole bored through her forehead and out the back of her skull went without saying. This was no trepanning surgery. They had cut her mind away in order to create an obedient soldier. It made Ichigo feel sick to his stomach. He would hate to see her Resurrección. He would hate to see her more changed than this.

She was meant to be at home, kicking a football around the park in the sunshine, getting tanned and beating up their dad and looking out for Yuzu. He did not really know what they had done to her, or why. But it was ridiculously unfair that she had been distorted into an arrancar.

Karin didn't even believe in ghosts.

**o)0(o**

"Go show Shirojos how to fight, Ulquiorra," commanded Hallibel with a tilt of her head in the direction of the child soldier spread-eagled on the floor.

"And why do you grace me with such a task?" asked Ulquiorra, disinclined.

"You can share your memories, can't you? You can crush your eyes to dust and show others what they have seen. Seeing as Tenebra cannot reason or speak, or really understand what is around her, it is the best way to teach her. Speak directly to her instincts."

Aizen nodded slightly as the arrancar looked askance at him. His soldiers were intelligent. What a pleasant surprise. Perhaps he would keep them in the end after all.

"Resurrección of Espada Zero. This shall be interesting," grinned Grimmjaw, the teeth on his cheek twitching hungrily as the muscles beneath bunched.

Ulquiorra stalked over to Karin, standing above her with a blank expression. Calmly inserting his fingertips into the small gap between cornea and muscle, he pulled out his eyeball without flinching. The orb rolled wetly in the palm of his cloud-coloured hand, until the sharp pupil and ink-green iris stared at its twin. Perhaps it felt betrayed, having been ripped from its place. A stub of optic nerve hung from the blind spot, he used this to pick it up and dangle it as it hardened in his bizarre version of rigour mortis. Before extracting it; he had recalled his past from pathetic Hollow, through the ranks of the Gillian to Adjuchas and beyond; the savagery and hunger to eat all around, to gorge on the strong until one could best him - which they never had. And then, after many centuries of craving and hunting and feeling the heavy despair of never being sated, never feeling safe; Aizen had come to Las Noches.

Although he had never once visited the ruined castle, nor bowed to its king Barragan Luisenbarn and his grandiose airs, Ulquiorra had changed his mind then, and arrowed towards the glowing power source that was a rogue shinigami captain. Like a moth to light, he had approached, and like a fly in a web, he had been caught.

Then at last to shuck his ancient, ugly mask, and experience the wonder of having a face again. Being able to blink eyes that had before burned red with fatigue and desert winds. Being able to emote again, to display expressions, even if his heart remained empty, his interests narrow, and his face maudlin.

And after that, the Resurrección, and the rush of power. And then in secret, the second level, and the ocean of despair that bled out of his hollow heart to drown all around.

He remembered all these things, held the vision of them in his mind's eye, then crushed his real eye to dust. Its replacement was already regenerating.

A sorrowful Sandman, he scattered the motes of his memories over the girl. They seeped into her, her eyes that were slanted and predatory, the white irises ringed in thick black, and the barely-reacting round black pupils. Nothing like those of old.

Karin's breathing changed, the air rushing in and out of her healing lungs as Ulquiorra's past overrode her present. Easily tricking her instincts into acting upon dangers he had long since bested, and leaping to mirror his Resurrección. Using the first hand memories as an example, her empty mind began to figure out how to do it herself.

Karin's mouth moved silently at first. Yes, there were noises that had to be made. Special noises that would remind her of her true shape. Her Resurrección. And no, repeating the words that the bat - hollow had said made no difference to her, so the instincts burrowed deep within the broken and bound soul of the arrancar, searching for a name and a summons.

A summons and a name.

**o)0(o**

She no longer had thoughts, so she did not know something was reacting to the search. She did not see, consciously, the great black behemoth in the seat of her soul as it rolled around in awakening. The two blunt, white heads at either end of an ash-speckled black body, as a vast caterpillar tried to awaken. Its many legs and swollen, segmented body were hideous. One side was alert already, its face a mask, neck swinging from side to side in search of prey. The other side was a skull, neither human nor animal, but neither a stylised mask. It was still overcoming its slumber. It had reacted only to the search for a word. Two words. A verb and a name.

The skull looked around at the barren landscape of Karin's soul with void eye sockets, and understood that there was no inner mind to converse with here. Just a grey rain-washed sky, and a grey ocean, and a thin, razor's edge ridge of stone splitting the ocean in half. This slender bridge reached all the way from the other end of the sky to the small lump of black earth that held the monstrous larva that was itself.

The skull wondered where the soul of the human could have gone. Then it saw its other half, the masked half, the Hollow part, and realised perhaps what was going on. The Hollow half was thrashing around, searching for conflict as its instincts burned for survival.

But the battle was outside this world.

"Name. Name. Name and summons, resurrección. Resurrección." The words whistled frantically from the mask's jaws, Ulquiorra's instructions voiced as far as it could manage. "Power. Power. Survival. Despair. Resurrección. More power! Enough. Enough....power......survive....despair...."

"Enough power to survive despair? Though a Hollow knows not that despair never can be killed."

The skull chattered its teeth. Its voice was dried-out, husky, and there were no muscles to enact its attitude. "Deep inside the emptiness there must be hope, for you attempt to survive despair and reach its other side. Yet there is none. It is like this ocean. Endless."

"Name. Summons. Resurrección."

"You cannot remember your own name?" The skull shivered. "We are now one being. "You have none. Mine becomes yours. This is not what I waited an eternity to achieve. Yet here we are, and there is no choice in a mindless soul."

"Name. Name."

"Here we are, we Naraku, and we are Condemned to this world."

**o)0(o**

Tenebra was still lying on the floor, to all intents and purposes comatose, aside from her thin chest pumping air in and out methodically. An automated piston, no life inside. Ichigo looked at her, finding it so hard to believe that the chalk white mannequin could be Karin. Perhaps it was a trick to break down his defences. Perhaps they had told Orihime to lie, and put on an act. His certainty was backpedalling fast, trying to escape the truth by fleeing into denial...

He had already admitted it... and accepted it... but he was more than willing to be proved wrong. He was desperate.

The black hair was slightly longer and wilder than his sister's. A bad imitation? The eyes were slanted, giving the impression that she was focused on hunting, rather than a mindless Minus. And that strange crown of teeth, sharp fangs both pointing up and digging down into her hair, as the long slender jawbone tapered away to the back of her head. At each end a thin curved horn bent inwards, overlapping beneath her hollow hole and scraping her shoulder blades. Ichigo shied away from thinking about it. He just could not imagine his sister as a Hollow. He didn't want to know how Inoue had felt when Sora had fallen; wanted it not to be true.

She was in one of their uniforms.

Just like Inoue, the other person he'd intended to protect. And Rukia, at her execution, had been all in white. Forget that it was a colour symbolic of purity and goodness in other cultures. Ichigo only associated it with death, enemies and emptiness. And here was his little sister wrapped in it from head to foot. Here was her skin, bleached to Aizen's colours.

Had they hurt Oyaji too?

He froze.

What about Yuzu?

If he ever returned, would there be a home for him to go to?

His skin was starting to creep. If this was really Karin, then everyone else was probably gone too. If everyone else was gone, and he himself was at Aizen's nonexistent 'mercy'...

It would be the cruellest thing in the world to leave Karin here alone.

Here in the heart of Las Noches, with nothing but monsters and dust all around.

Best to take her with him. Best to trust Zangetsu, and save her soul.

Best to kill Karin.

The zanpakuto was thrumming in his hand as Zangetsu sang out his warlust…

**o)0(o**

The soul reaper's blade scythed down, his eyes and its edge ignited with the blue fire of absolute commitment.

_chink_

The sword bit deep into Shirojos's own weapon; earlier cracking it yet this time not overpowering it. Her eyes rolled up to meet his, and for the first time he saw something other than nothing in their shallow depths.

It still wasn't his sister.

But it was definitely _aware_.

The voice crept out, not Karin's sarcastic drawl either, a voice from within her that was dried out and brittle, the voice of a skeleton.

"Condemn,"

Ichigo leapt away, starting to spin Tensa Zangetsu by its short length of black chain. Its blurringly fast rotation formed a swift makeshift barrier against any explosion that might arise from the arrancar's Resurrección. The one that would break his soul even further to see.

Tenebra Shirojos dragged herself to her feet, holding the short blade's handle in both hands.

"Condemn," repeated that alien voice; "Naraku."

A shadow fell over the arena. When it began to weigh down on his shoulders and make his skin prickle, Ichigo realised that it was actually her reiatsu. Colourless, insubstantial, yet certainly it existed. A shadow. He peered through the sudden darkness, trying to spot his opponent's new form in the poor light.

There.

Nothing had changed.

Oh, thank god.

Seeing Karin as some totally mutated Hollow would have broken him. But to be humanoid even in Resurrección - did that class her as a Vasto Lorde? What the _hell_ had Aizen done to her?

As Tenebra's passive reiatsu faded and all brightened, he saw streaks of splotchy non-colour across his field of vision. Had some glaring light given him after-images? Blinking hard, his eyes swept the battlefield quickly in case of attack.

The thin lines were still there, and slowly it dawned on him that they were swords.

"...shikai?"

"Shikai." Aizen confirmed by chance, leaning forwards in fascination. "What a temperamental thing that Hougyoku is. Perhaps it created a vaizard."

Ichigo shifted his weight from side to side, warming up before bolting forwards at supersonic speed. He crossed the stadium in the flicker of an eye, sidestepping behind Karin and swinging Zangetsu at her unguarded back. Bile built up in his throat but he did not slow down. It was horrific, but there was no other choice than to lie down and die.

That felt too much like abandoning her.

So he mentally clutched at all the thin straws of justification, everything Rukia had ever taught him about how a shinigami could cleanse and rebirth a Hollow, prayed it applied to vaizards and arrancars, and charged.

But nothing connected. Leaping away, knowing this probably meant she was behind him at his weak spot, he turned and scanned the vast hall with its false sky avidly.

No. She was far away on his left. As he watched, she flickered closer in a sonido movement. But she did not stop where he had expected. Instead her path zigzagged at abandon. And again, and again, so soon he did not know where to dodge to, because he could not predict her pattern. And with the insane speeds of shunpo and sonido, where enough actions could be packed into ten seconds as to make them feel like twenty minutes of slow motion, not being able to think ahead could be fatal.

Very quickly Ichigo realised that the only way to counteract her erratic butterfly steps was to go up a gear. So he focused hard on memorising the battlefield to ensure he never had to think twice about his location, as he wouldn't have time to slow down, and kicked off.

This was his bankai speciality, compressed velocity, although since fighting Byakuya's Senbonzakura Kageyoshi he had never achieved such a high again. Something about the pent up energy then had pushed him into overdrive. Whereas in the fights against arrancars, fears of his Hollow escaping and doubts of his own power had somehow allowed that ferocious speed to ebb away. Not to mention they were often equally fast.

The time for faltering was over.

"Zangetsu-san," called out Ichigo. In the back of his mind, and in the steel that weighted his hand, the tall man answered. "Ichigo."

"What's your top speed?"

"How much can your muscles take?"

He almost laughed. "I'm a ghost. I can probably take anything."

"Probably? Definitely. Do not do things by halves, Ichigo. I will only ever demand three hundred percent effort from you."

"Gotcha."

And he kicked off.

For a moment, none of the watching Numeros and Fracción could see him. The more elite Espadas and Privarons were able to track him, but even then he appeared as a multi-shadowed blur. Zommari Leroux's eyes widened. He might have found a match for speed. However the expert could track how each clone moved slightly differently, the illusion not as perfect as his own.

Now the room was full of simulacra Ichigos, flashing every which way, coming and going like the drum beats of a high-octane song.

He took to racing round and round Shirojos, corralling her in the centre of the room. And then Zangetsu began to roar in his mind, throwing himself unflinchingly, eagerly into the combat. Ichigo started to compress his reiatsu at the tip of the onyx katana, flicking fast and furious waves of red-tinged black energy at the ghost-like arrancar, whose stammering sonido was still hard to see.

The Getsuga Tenshous started to flood in. With the ringing pincer attack he had to dodge his own blasts, yet that was an advantage in itself - he always moved to where Tenebra would dodge next. And though she shrugged off blow after blow, the constant waves of vicious dark matter had to be wearing her down.

Soon the centre of the coliseum was a pool of black. Even Ichigo was surprised by the sheer volume of condensed reiatsu he'd thrown out. He paused for half an instant, to see if he'd done any damage. His cloak-like shihakusho was still in one piece, which boded well for energy levels - he was pretty sure it acted as a gauge. Now if only he could make it into an enormous wing-like cape to match Zangetsu's...

Karin was still in one piece too. A few streaked burns were healing away with a quiet sizzle, and her face was more focused than ever. She was starting to look terrifying, despite being half his height. And three years younger. Twelve and fifteen. God, he was too young - why was he duking it out in Hueco Mundo? He was still a brat, right? All the shinigami were something like a century at least.

He wondered how strong 'Tenebra Shirojos' was on the Espada scale. He looked her over for a tattoo. The white shihakusho she wore was unusual - its black border formed a large X over her child's torso, leaving the stomach visible with a… black zero tattoo.

Zero?

As in, lowest or as in, off the scale high?

He frowned, hoping that he was wrong, raising Zangetsu for another strike.

And walked straight onto one of her swords. It was hard to see, a shadow hanging in mid air, and it seemed to have no solid substance. He felt no more resistance than from air. In terror, he leapt backwards, only to find himself unwounded. Beyond a heart attack from the shock.

And she slashed out with the twin umbrae, this time catching his chest and scything straight through the guarding Tensa Zangetsu.

Blood spurted; the zanpakuto was sheared effortlessly in half. Ichigo stumbled backwards, yelling in pain from the shallow gashes and from Zangetsu's *scream* inside his mind.

The way Karin fought with the two swords would have been efficient if they were more solid than nothing. Her every sweep ended with one guarding, one poised to attack, though her brother had to wonder why. She'd shrugged off a lake's worth of his reiatsu, or healed too fast to be affected in any case.

Now she lowered them slightly, reversed the grips so the translucent blades ran parallel to her arms in an efficient streamlined manner, and vanished.

Just like he had, she had leapt into a top-level sonido that could barely be traced. If he didn't know any better he'd guess that she was learning from him as they fought, or whatever inner hollow he was matched against in her place. Because Karin would never hurt anyone. Lovingly kick them in the head, perhaps, but never seriously bring pain.

Blood was streaming down him, damping his clothes, running down his arms to make his grip on Tensa Zangetsu slippery. He couldn't track Espada Zero. Her speed was just mind-blowing. And to think he had thought he was so fast! It would take all his energy just to follow her, as not only did she flit miles in a single step; her path was also all corkscrewed and unpredictable.

Ichigo tried not to panic, and with a jerk of his wrist began to swirl the broken Tensa Zangetsu in large, lazy circles again, holding it by the chain. How could he defend on all sides? His mind was racing. How could he stop her coming near if her sword was only solid when she wished it? What was he meant to do with only half a sword?!

A rain of silver-grey Bala suddenly poured out of the pale ring surrounding him that was Tenebra Shirojos's sonido.

Ichigo clawed his hollow mask onto his face, felt his eyes burn with the change to black sclera and yellow iris; and let his reiatsu flare. It came up like an alien fire, a blue core with midnight flames and blood red tips. It was all of his energy, shinigami and hollow. Above the inferno a streamlined skull that matched his mask roared a challenge at the Espada endangering his life. Within the fiery tempest, Tensa Zangetsu had reformed by taking a huge bite out of his powers. A deficit equal to one of the sleeves and part of the cape of his red-lined black cloak. A quick mental calculation told Ichigo that he'd just used up a fifth of his overall stamina - a worrying amount to lose in one shot.

But of far less concern than losing his zanpakuto.

Whilst the dense surge of his reiatsu deflected the many shadow bullets Karin was firing at him, inspiration hit. Ichigo began to spin Tensa Zangetsu again, this time at a speed that made the sword hum. A whirring noise filled the air, shortly followed by a riproar as the vaizard yelled "GETSUGA TENSHO!" and a great ripple of deadly power spilled out in all directions.

It hit, and hit heavily. Karin was thrown across the stadium and crashed into the wall in an implosion of dust and rubble, tumbling into the crowd. One of her shadowblades was dropped, and it severed a Privaron Espada in two halves as it fell. When it landed, a line was shaved through the stone steps of the ampitheatre, only its black-braided white hilt stopping it from falling forever. That area of the crowd was unsurprisingly deserted when Karin landed catlike beside her weapon.

Ichigo still couldn't figure out what her swords were made of. Was it like a lightsabre?

He charged, not caring so long as he could avoid it. Slowing down in any way would only kill him faster. Karin was knocked back by another spinning Getsuga. Ichigo loomed over instantly, stabbing down.

Marble cracked under the point of the zanpakuto, but Shirojos had rolled to avoid it. "One, two..." gasped that haunting subconscious whisper of Karin, but the eyes that rose to meet him were still cold, dead, and _hunting_. He tripped backwards, long coat flaring as he skidded away. "Six," he replied, stressed. The seconds till his vaizard mask would shatter were decreasing, no matter how insanely he defied the limits of physics.

She jump-started her sonido, accelerating. It had turned into cat and mouse again. A game of chase swiftly terminated when she appeared in front of him, whirling with both swords razoring through the air, because he had miscalculated her trajectory yet again. Or perhaps it had changed midstep. It didn't really matter, because those twin zanpakuto had gouged out half of his ribs and lungs again before he even registered it.

It was odd, he thought as he fell backwards, falling so slowly in real time after the speed of a second before. He never felt those swords entering him. He only ever felt it when they moved away. His organs and bones had been sheared clean away, nowhere to be found on the white floor and no gore on her blades. Though that floor was soaking red with his lifeblood now.

The pain was unimaginable. He could hardly comprehend its size. And shock took so long to set in...though he knew a place he could escape to.

Again Ichigo let his awareness move onto another plane of being, one in which resided the zanpakuto spirit he staked his life on time and time again, and the hollow that only wanted his death if anything.

"Ichigo..." rumbled Zangetsu, worried and drawn behind the confident colour of his amber shades.

"Aw, shit," screeched the Hollow, the colourless him, the figure that looked so much like Karin did now. "Look at the state of him. I'm taking over."

It marked the true gravity of the situation that Zangetsu did nothing to stop him, and that Ichigo _could_ do nothing.

The Hollow paused momentarily before fading into the outer world. "Ha. And don't expect me back here again, assholes."

**o)0(o**

Aizen wandered onto the battered battlefield with the relaxed air of one taking a walk in a park. As the ryoka boy bled out on the sand, sputtering reiatsu like a damp firework, he approached Tenebra Shirojos, Espada Zero, the boy's own hollowified little sister and _his_ best fighter.

"Let me see how you are doing that," he murmured softly, calmingly. The arrancar flinched and stared at him in alarm, raising her swords ready to sweep straight through him.

"Ah ah! No, my dear Espada, that kind of greeting is only for our enemies." He caught her wrists and held them above her head, immobilised as easily as the human twelve-year-old Karin would have been. Sosuke studied the strange shadows, tilting them this way and that, never touching them.

Shirojos kicked and struggled below, her kicks knocking him backwards with their weight. Without a single word or gesture, he placed a binding kido upon her.

"This is dangerous. Oh so very dangerous." He sounded pleased. "It's not a blade, nor even energy." Carefully leaning the zanpakutos away from his face, as she strained to snip his head off, Aizen transferred her wrists to one hand and reached out to the blades.

Hands and body immobilised, Karin started to aggregate a dense rain-grey Cero at her mouth instead. Before she could fire it - in the same time that most arrancars took to form a Bala - Aizen clapped a hand over her mouth much like she had done to Wonderweiss. The attack snuffed out. The black-ringed white eyes widened before settling into a savage glare. Whatever kind of being was piloting Karin's empty body, it seemed to hold no fondness for its creator and master.

"Genius. A sword-shaped rip in reality. A hole in the universe. It would be like walking into the edge of a Garganta - effortlessly torn in half. There is no resistance, for the zanpakuto has no substance - but when the portal is moved away the slightest amount the physical object is separated from itself. How ingenius. Your swords are as sharp as air."

With the wild arrancar fully subdued, Aizen reached a hand into the grey dimension beyond her blades. He retracted his hand, and it remained whole.

But all had seen Tensa Zangetsu shorn in half mere moments ago.

"And of course nothing could halt their descent...for they are not made of physical matter nor spiritual. Wonderful. I am proud of you, my dear Tenebra, you have turned out very well."

Karin shuddered, even unconscious still disturbed by his joy.

**o)0(o**

Clouds were forming around Ichigo's still body as if it were generating steam. They spread out, dense enough to hide him completely from view. The quality of his reiatsu began to change, and the air grew heavy and electric.

No forewarning, a monstrosity lunged out of the roiling vapours, chomping onto Shirojos's frozen legs and hauling her out of Aizen's vice-like grip. It was little more than a vast amoeba with huge jaws and sharp teeth. And it seemed to have come from Ichigo's dying body.

Aizen quirked a half-smile at this development, walking leisurely back to his vice-captains and Espada as the hall continued to flood with smoke. A click of his fingers erased the kido affecting Tenebra, as she was dragged out of sight. A gurgling noise emitting from within the cloud; occasionally more formless maws would rise above the fog; long-necked Loch Ness monsters.

"Weird," yawned Gin, scratching the side of his face. "Ichigo-kun seems to've turned into a hydra or something."

Red lamps became visible. A dim Cero like a ruby lighthouse beaming out to tempt sailors onto rocks. As the mists cleared in the heat so a sinister voice become audible.

"It's not gonna be so easy now, na, _Karin-chan_!"

The Hollow's speech was rasping and synthetic, as though its voice box had been dragged through a thorn hedge backwards. "I'm nothing _like_ the other guy… My instinct and desire to fight is _perfect_."

The voice was grating, half-strangled. And hungry, and gloating, and heartless, and cruel.

Now his body became visible, changed beyond recognition. Where Ichigo had suffered a deep carving out of his torso, the Hollow had a nest of snakes. "Even my healing wounds want to bite you," crooned the demon. And released the Cero.

It scorched the air and birthed a thunderclap, melting the sand to bubbled glass like a Gran Rey might. Several of the Fraccion in the stands were obliterated, unable to block it like their stronger cousins.

Tenebra had sent most of the blast to a netherworld, sweeping her zanpakutos in a way that widened the portals and absorbed the damage. Now she watched her brother's outer Hollow like a hawk.

It had a completely white body, signifying a higher level of Menos Grande. Its Hollow hole ran through the centre of its chest, and a strong, supple lizard-tail followed from the base of its spine. It had a mane of livid orange hair; a mask that was all bloody stripes and fangs and scowling eye sockets.

The eyes completed their transformation from lambent yellow to hellfire red.

"THE KING IS DEAD!" shrieked the personification of Ichigo's despair. "LONG LIVE THE KING!" Then it laughed; long, low and threatening. Staring round the coliseum, it almost sighed in satisfaction at all the future fights before picking up Tensa Zangetsu and roaring.

A Getsuga Tensho coiled all over the battlefield like a black serpent, Ouroboros in its death throes. The violence was devastating.

"Ichi-nii!" cried the ghost of Karin's memory one final time.

Espada Zero materialised behind him, lacerating him with thousands of gashes, ricocheting around the Hollow at bullet speed, always hacking and spinning and slashing. Leaping above him and swaying low whenever his deadly claws swiped in retaliation; flaying him alive as those unavoidable blades flickered in and out of sight.

Her unrelenting stabs and cuts and slices were overcoming the speed of his regeneration. She pressed her advantage with furious chains of attacks, every gash opened in him deeper than the last. Poisoned Hollow entrails were unburied as Shirojos carved away its steel skin.

It began to scream the scream of the damned, the scream that heralded utter oblivion and the shattering of an already broken soul.

"Two,"

Now little more than a half-eaten carcass, mutated from messy regenerations and its many jaws still snapping. Tenebra continued to shred it into nothingness, unfaltering until every last scrap of her dangerous sibling was gone.

"One."

Kurosaki Ichigo's comrades collapsed, horrified. The surviving arrancars crowding the stadium went wild, cheering and heckling and firing Bala like fireworks; no longer caring that they had been denied their pound of flesh.

Provoked by their riot, Karin swept both swords in wide arcs around her. A shadow halo hung in the air, until it swelled into a sheet Cero that wiped out hundreds of the surrounding horde.

Hallibel appeared by the child's side, radiating a calming aura. "And?" she prompted.

"…Zero…"

Her shikai faded, two blades reforming as a single chipped dagger. Falling back into a doll-like state, Karin blinked, the zealous eyes empty once again.

_White robes spattered in flecks of gore, she walks out of the arena; treading carelessly upon the blood smears that are all she has left of her brother._

**o)0(o**


	10. Rain City

**Hell Butterfly**

**Rain City**

**~10~**

**o)0(o**

Drilling, pounding, drumming rain; falling so hard and fast that Ichigo was terrified the glass buildings all around him would smash. Every drop that hit his unprotected body felt like a hail bullet. The wind was a mad scream, a vast beast roaring at the rain to attack more ferociously.

Clinging to the flagpole as the whole world turned upside down, the ground was above his head but his feet were swinging nauseously over open, stormy air. Hunched over in his ragged black cloak, hiding from the downpour, Zangetsu was crouched on the underside of the mast.

Only the Hollow seemed to be affected by 'normal' gravity, standing on the window panes that cracked beneath his feet. With the slow laugh of one resigned to death, he danced back and forth across the side of the skyscraper, waving a white sword around like a child with a stick.

Ichigo stared round at the violent tempest of his inner world, too terrified to even choke out the questions whirling inside his head. The rain was pouring upwards, lightning flashed below, and above all the drowning sounds of the squall he could hear the ominous clink-clank of steel.

"These are the heavenly chains," said Zangetsu simply, looking up through his amber shades at the distant ground. At the base of the building, huge doors were grinding open. The clatter of a million metal links echoed, rushing out of the dark portal like the noise of falling shingle.

His fingers were slipping. If he fell into the sky here, would he remain in his own mind or tumble beyond it into insanity? Risking the vertigo that would cost his precious grip on the anchoring flagstaff, Ichigo looked down. The gale was stinging his eyes to tears and something gigantic was dropping out of the roiling black clouds; accelerating up towards him.

A ruptured moon, a cosmic satellite gashed with a gaping wound – as though Getsuga Tensho really had assaulted the heavens and bit straight through; now tossing its prey at its master. His entire body baulked away from the impact.

But the moon had frozen, hanging in midair the same way it had hung at the top of the sky. Above him Zangetsu was standing, balancing on the thin shaft and walking sombrely forwards.

"W-why…"

"This is the turmoil of your soul." The enigmatic zanpakuto gestured all around them at the storm, the spinning Hollow, the topsy-turvy tower blocks. "You are dying."

Frowning, shaking his head, he struggled to get the right words out before it was too late. "No, n-no; why are…you – leaving?"

The man paused, his dark hair flaring in the crosswinds.

"I have lived in your soul, but I am not you. We are avatars of each other's powers, but we are not one. When you die, there will be nowhere for me to exist. And thus I am returning to my own home."

He stepped over a gap of infinite depth, hands tucked inside the pockets of his swirling cloak, the black blade with its hilt-less tang and bloodless white bandages sleeping on his back.

"Until next time, Kurosaki Ichigo."

"Zangetsu –"

The zanpakuto leapt into the chasm of the moon, and the flagpole vanished.

**o)0(o**

For six heart-stopping seconds, Ichigo plummeted into the depths of a thunderstorm. He couldn't hear his own screaming, but felt his throat grow raw – a tiny detail in a chaotic rush of adrenaline and flashbacks and lightning.

His fall ceased with a vicious jerk. Black chains like that which had once adorned the hilt of Tensa Zangetsu were coiling around him under their own power, dangling from the grey-blue skyscraper above him. Winded by the abrupt stop, he gasped airlessly to catch his breath. The chains were beginning to draw him upwards again.

And despite that being a good thing, despite that surely saving his –evidently already deceased – life; Ichigo could not help but fear his new destination. As he was winched back to the familiarity of the city of windows, he saw his inner Hollow battling the dark restraints that contrasted so starkly against his pure white shihakusho, skin and hair. The Hollow was no longer wielding a zanpakuto either, and the reminder sent a pang of loneliness through Ichigo's heart.

"Hey! What'syourname!" yelled the teenager, no longer content to allow this insanity to rule him. The Hollow looked up at him, only distinguishable by a white blur and the blue of its tongue through the heavy downpour.

"I don't have a name, ya Horse!" it screeched back, voice distorted by inhumanity. "But you can call me King!"

Ichigo almost laughed in disbelief. What a joke. They were both dying, and it was still harping on about that? "What 'King'?" was his exhausted reply. "I let you have a turn and…and Karin killed you! You can't get much more dead than we are!" It was difficult to raise his voice over the cacophony.

"There's always Hell!" shot back the pale monster cheerfully. It had stopped fighting the chains, and now its human counterpart saw the way the shackles just slipped over its skin, skidded through the Hollow hole, but never quite managed to catch hold. But they must have been irritating nonetheless, for the beast was beginning to deform.

He had been dragged almost in line with the alter-ego. Ichigo thrashed against the chains, trying to reach the crumbling building. The Hollow was prowling the shattered glass on bleeding feet. A thick white tail with vivid red markings flicked behind it, the mask both haunting and healing now hid its human face. Garishly bright orange hair fell down its back in a spiky mane. The hole was clearly visible.

Ichigo stared, because he had never seen the true form of the minus him before; having always been trapped on the inside. It was hard to comprehend how they could possibly exist as the same being.

"Why is this happening to me and not you?!"

The Hollow turned to face him fully, eye to eye if it tilted its head back, and close enough to reach out and snag the tangle of chains in a bleached claw. Ichigo's slow ascent halted momentarily.

"Because you're the soul, and I'm soulless." Its speech reverberated with a harsh buzz. Its cold, wet, bone face knuckled against his. "But without you in me somewhere, without the base of this inside world for me to exist in, I'm just gonna disappear. Like Zangetsu-jii would've if he'd stayed after you were gone." One of the spines on its shoulder fractured and broke off, illustrating their shared imminent doom. It did not regenerate. "Zanpakutos only kill the Hollow; then the soul is released again. But the soul hid in the first place because there were things it couldn't bear."

Drenched to the bone, losing circulation in the tight nest of chains, Ichigo had never felt more weak and helpless as his pale imitation explained the secrets of life and death.

"That's what these are for…" and it flicked the metal binds, making them hum eerily; "Chains of Fate and the Soul Sleep. They got cut up when that Kuchiki bastard made Sode no Shirayuki let go of you, and that's why you had to get spiritually fucked up to get Zangetsu back again. That's why you've got me, and that's…all you've got time to hear."

"Oi!" shouted Ichigo desperately; "Tell me what it means, I don't get it!"

The Hollow shrugged carelessly, liberating the rusted links one teasing claw at a time. "Don't matter…you'll forget anyway. Your soul is going to sleep now." Its words were jagged razors under his skin. "Your memories are getting locked away, and I'm about to vanish." As the monster let go and sent the straining chains streaking up the side of the building in a blur of rain and windowpanes, a final mocking question echoed loudly in Ichigo's wake.

"Didja think this city was empty, your Majesty?"

**o)0(o**

The doors into the unfathomable tower block were open. No gaping maw, no esoteric portal, just plain and simply open; and solely dark inside. He would never come out of those doors again after entering, but the ferrous chains had throttled him, and he had no oxygen with which to fight. Even if such necessities did not matter in a dream world, Ichigo could not bring himself to move anymore.

Motionless, with tears of pain and fatigue and fear streaming down his face, the boy was dragged into the shadows, and swallowed by the skyscraper. He was not a powerful vaizard any longer. Somehow he knew the only thing entering this building was his purest self. And even without seeing the deconstruction, he could tell the Hollow was gone.

In the sinister, formless oblivion – a dark tunnel with no light at the end – Ichigo turned round and gazed sadly at the gates closing behind him. This was death.

This was the end of Kurosaki Ichigo.

When only a sliver of the outside world remained, he witnessed a flash of sunset gold; and everything stopped.

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	11. Light Brigade

**Hell Butterfly**

**Light Brigade**

**~11~**

**o)0(o**

Unohana Retsu, Captain of the Fourth Squad, moved serenely through the white halls of Las Noches. In her coat of office she was near perfectly camouflaged, but of course it was a perfectly disguised presence that awarded her such calm in the enemy's keep.

Unohana, with fifteen hundred years behind her and in active service as a shinigami before Yamamoto's academy had even been conceived of, was without doubt the most powerful captain after the old man himself.

And yet she never showed a glimmer of it.

In Fourth Squad flaring one's ridiculously overpowered spiritual power at random was not encouraged. She selected the weak ones, who knew best how to hold back and make a little go a long way. The ones with a skill hand at kido; the quiet ones who could listen well and not make life-jeopardising mistakes. Those with a touch of care in their hearts. The intelligent ones that were more than an asauchi attached to an idiot.

And sometimes just the strays that did not deserve Rukongai. They could weave bandages if nothing else.

And, she thought with the tiniest of frowns; clean sewers. Honestly, such a task should really have gone to Eleventh Division. Did none of them ever consider cross-contamination?

An arrancar walked straight past the quiet woman. Before it could complete a double-take, it melted. Unohana turned round and nodded in thanks to the giant manta ray hovering behind her.

It was an old adage, recalled Retsu as she continued through the corridors; that no one seemed to remember these days.

"Those who know best how to heal; know best how to hurt."

Laughing a little at her mistake of speaking aloud, she covered her mouth in a small self-admonition. However it was indeed true. The wisdom of reconstruction went hand in hand with its opposing twin, deconstruction.

Each and every Hollow she passed dissolved in a pale green mist.

She was nearing the inner circles of the fortress. It was clear from the increase in nearby spirit threads. The barest whisper of power showed her which way to go and she began to follow those ribbons of red, blue and white. Shinigami, Quincy, and human. Fortunately they all led in the same direction.

"Good evening, Tousen-san," Unohana greeted him as they passed each other like ships in the night. The blind man froze, head jerking round to locate the source of the sound. Yet her breathing was light, her footsteps silent, and her aura flawlessly suppressed. The treacherous captain eventually turned and walked away, defeated by her ninja skills.

"Minazuki," chided the healer once the coast was clear. "Please stop stalking the poor man, now is not the time."

The strange beast rolled its single eye at her and sighed, grudgingly returning to her side.

**o)0(o**

"Heh heh heh," laughed an adjuchas, kicking the scree from a landslide as he scented or sensed what was trapped beneath it. "Ashido's out for the count." His mask was fixed in a permanent grin; but this time he meant it.

"This is perfect. A few Gillians and a cero concerto – and that will be the end of the soul reaping rat." He looked around, wondering where he could locate enough Gillians to melt the rocks back into magma.

Stalking away at high speed, the Hollow passed a black and white figure and barely noticed until it was behind him. Turning at the unusual scent, the monster screeched its hatred.

"_Another_ shinigami? Fuck that! I'm not having two of you crapping up my territory!"

Kuchiki Byakuya-taicho turned, hand on his sword, and blinked coolly. "Forgive me, perhaps I was too subtle. You clearly have not noticed that you have already been stabbed." He removed his hand from the hilt of his zanpakuto and used it to flick the thin sweep of his fringe out of his eyes.

"What bullshit are you spewing..." growled the Hollow before bursting into a cloud of glowing spirit particles.

"Too stupid to realise he was dead," said the captain derisively. "I have a plumbed a new depth of disrespect for Hollows."

**o)0(o**

"We urgently need to get out of here," stated Ishida Uryuu, pacing the sparsely furnished room in agitation. "The longer we're here, the more likely it becomes that they'll find a way to use us against Soul Society."

His fellow prisoners remained silent. The only light was that of the ever-crescent moon, the only movement the slow flit of Inoue's fairies beneath the ceiling. She was trying to heal herself of Aizen's punishments, but her heart was so broken that her reiatsu could barely fizz.

Sado Yasutora remained silent. They may never have said it in so many words, but Ichigo had been his best friend. The one who fought for him. The one he fought for. The knowledge that the person who had stormed Seireitei had just been erased from existence was angering him. Rage was making all the old memories of his violent behaviour back in Mexico well up, and even the weight of his grandfather's medallion round his neck did nothing to quench the flames of hate.

His devil's fists itched to destroy. He had not felt this in _years_.

Renji was lying on the floor; in a patch where he could see the moon he still had not reached. He had lost close friends before. All of them, in fact. But he and Rukia had been the ones with magic, the survivors. In all the years he had gotten used to the idea of her not dying. And of course, dramatic rescues by ryoka only cemented that belief. She'd cheated an execution ordered by Central 46, Aizen and the _Soutaicho_, for heaven's sake! What on earth had she seen that made her stop fighting that Espada? What could possibly make her falter?

…

…So Rukia was gone. And her hero was dead too, the one whose attacks pierced the moon he only barked at. Forget being a stray dog.

He had nothing to howl for now.

In the depths of his soul, the chimera Zabimaru stood forlornly in a shallow pool. Night had fallen in the inner world, and the sky was veiled with clouds. _Renji,_ called the nue, sombre. _The moon you chased was never Byakuya. But always the sister that was stolen from you._

_I never hunted anyone._ Renji turned his face from the cold moonlight. _I was just the one being chased away._

"I…"

Inoue's hoarse voice broke them from their reveries.

"I came here so that no one would die…" She curled up into a wretched little ball. "A-and now Kuchiki-san and…Kuro-saki…saki are…" A sob rattled her. "And Karin-chan are all…!"

"Inoue-san! Please don't blame yourself; it was our decision to come…here…" Ishida leapt forwards to comfort her in what little way he could, already aware that his words would have no effect. Yet he stopped mid step.

The door had opened.

"Dinner time," trilled a blond arrancar with false cheer. He shoved the food trolley hard, sending it crashing into the opposite wall where it crumpled like an accordion. Totally destroyed by the force of the impact.

"Tesla…" explained Inoue listlessly, though she lacked the energy to tell them this was Nnoitra's Fraccion.

"Tesla-_sama_," the Hollow corrected her. His lip was curled in disgust as he took in the sorry sight of the captives. He continued speaking with a mocking air. "I'm just doing you a favour. Better to starve to death than suffer what's coming next. But you're already in luck that my Espada is dead, 'cause he would have eaten you _alive_."

He stretched out a gloved hand and hauled Orihime up by the neck. "Let me give you a preview."

Tesla grinned dangerously.

A grin that melted seconds later, liquefied by pervasive pale jade vapours. Inoue flinched away, revolted by the drips of plasma that were once his hand at her throat. In mere moments the green smoke deconstructed the Fraccion entirely.

In the open doorway a familiar face smiled warmly. Unohana Retsu, the healer whose long dark hair was always braided neatly down the front of her shihakusho and white captain's haori.

"Abarai-fukutaicho, would you and your comrades mind stepping into Minazuki's mouth? It will allow us to escape Hueco Mundo quickly and safely."

Renji shook his head mutely, pointing at the manta ray in disbelief. "But his breath melts people."

Everyone looked at the puddle of Hollow on the floor. Retsu's smile grew slightly forced.

"Surely it is better to melt to death than suffer 'what comes next'?" She repeated Tesla's words in a horrifically gentle tone.

Once the threat of an even worse fate had prompted them to obey and climb into Minazuki's gaping maw, Unohana held out her scabbard to the zanpakuto spirit.

"Carefully, please, Minazuki."

Somehow the green-eyed monster turned completely into insubstantial clouds that were then compacted back into the shape of a sword. Sheathing it, she looked around the room for anything they might have missed.

Satisfied, Unohana turned and flash-stepped straight out of Las Noches. With Aizen perfectly unawares that he had been invaded, robbed and evaded with no more fuss than the blinking of an eye.

**o)0(o**

Ashido was crushed between layers of dense, ancient rocks, his bones bruised and his flesh split. It had happened before, maybe, he couldn't remember. Right now, he could not even hear what he was saying.

"That was a ...new year's message but no normal answers....they might be breathing under that grave but the zeros really steered them out...how can I have...I don't know what cheesecake is.....sayonara - please?"

Then again, he didn't particularly care what was coming out of his mouth so long as it wasn't blood; and if his instincts kept firing on high alert like this until he was safely back in his den he would forgive any level of verbal delirium.

He had gone insane plenty of times in the five hundred years of solitude, but thankfully he had never gone stupid with it.

Gasping for air in the tiny space between two crushing forces of granite, he gathered his reiatsu - too out of it for kido - and _shoved_. Several tonnes of stone jerked upwards for a brief moment, enough for him to grasp the hilt of his sword with a fractured hand before they fell again. A rib snapped, and he shrieked breathlessly.

More mumbling ensued before he could gather his wits enough for the next push towards freedom and the lonely survival he half-hated but couldn't help straining to keep.

"Beast married to a one-eyed radish...free patch...gonna retrieve a dead sloth. O-O-Okay.....the wind hates me...but the fireworks are bright - might burn forever......"

Swallowing dust and, damn it, there was the blood he hadn't wanted; blinking and realising he could almost see dead faces in the dark rocks. "Genji...poor Genji..." garbled his cut lips. "I used to know you...you used to be immortal like an elephant like me..."

There was another fistful of reiatsu he could gather up and punch the rockslide with, but it seemed to be falling out of him along with his leaking blood. Making the effort because there was nothing else he could do, he managed to control his lunatic rantings long enough to speak a very important name.

"Kajouhi," he croaked. "Whirl, Kajouhi!" He popped the sword a few inches from its scabbard with his thumb and closed his eyes for fear of them being burned out.

The blade went off in a firework, a screaming, spinning catherine wheel. It cut through the boulders like a buzz saw; flying embers searing tiny holes in Ashido's skin and shihakusho. Grinning maniacally, as was fitting, he slashed his arm up and sideways, carving a huge rent in the imprisoning rocks that allowed him to escape at last.

Strange lights were flickering underneath the landslide when Rukia and Byakuya approached it. The captain looked askance at his little sister. A noise painful to the ears was ripping the air: metal screeching through rock.

"A-Ashido-san?" called Rukia warily.

There was a heavy crackling explosion, heralding a fountain of pebbles and grit as a mutated, hunched figure burst out of the side of the collapsed mountain. He held something bright and colourful in his hand that was too brash and garish and loud to be anything born of the drab, silent world of Hueco Mundo. Pinwheeling fires chased each other in circles just beneath his hand.

"Hollow...all hollow...left so empty after the wounds and the blood and the words of friends all gone...but I was never hollow to my core......can't dig out the crazy parts....too slippery...." The figure seemed to be bemoaning its twisted fate, patting blindly at its smouldering fur cloak until a stolen mask came within reach. "Can't join them - so beat them. _Hollow_!"

Donning the skull like a knight drops his visor; the churning lights paused for an instant. And then Ashido leapt at Byakuya with a lightning-swift spinning slash.

It was blocked hastily, even sloppily. The regal Kuchiki spat a question at his adopted sibling before skidding away from the next onslaught.

"If this is he, did you believe he truly needed or deserved saving?!"

Rukia just shook her head helplessly. This raving, sparking berserker was not the measured man she had grudgingly abandoned such a short time ago. She had begged her brother to take this detour, insisting that the shinigami who had fought tirelessly for so many centuries deserved to be brought home. If only for his funeral.

Every swoop of his zanpakuto left a trail of fireworks dancing in the air. If it wasn't the sword whirling, then it was Ashido himself. As the weapons clashed again and again, Byakuya found himself deprived of time and opportunity to release his own Senbonzakura.

In moments a chance appeared, as the madman bounced backwards onto a tree trunk before somersaulting forwards, painting a vast circle of jazzing flames in all directions. A thousand metal blossoms rose to meet him, deadly cherry petals.

It had to be stopped.

"_Shinigami_!!" roared Rukia, an irate Soutaicho in both tone and attitude. Her thunderous voice pierced the shrieking whistles and bangs of the firecrackers. "STAND DOWN!!"

Eyes flickering back into full wakefulness, and seeing a human face where a Hollow had stood before; Ashido cast aside his blazing blade and threw his arms up in defence. Crashing into Senbonzakura's razor embrace, he yelled in anticipation of the pain.

Yet none came.

Byakuya sheathed his reformed sword with customary grace and speed. The attacker was laid semi-conscious at his feet, finally defeated by the ground. Glancing anxiously at his face, Rukia expected to see hatred aimed at the dutiful shinigami she had spoken so highly of.

"Dug himself out of a fallen cliff and attacked the first enemy to appear, blindly and ferociously whilst extensively wounded..." said Byakuya blankly.

That would elicit a verdict of stupidity, thought Rukia with regret; and because of her recommendations she would also be coloured with the same brush. Her Nii-sama had unfortunately seen nothing but the worst of her earlier rescuer.

A tiny smile crept across his face.

"I'm impressed."

**o)0(o**

Zaraki Kenpachi, sat on perhaps the only rock in the Hueco Mundo desert within a reiatsu-sapping barrier, perked his head up happily when Kurotsuchi Mayuri announced the distant approach of Unohana-taicho.

He couldn't see her himself, because today he was wearing _two_ power-munching eye patch monsters. It was part of the attempt to make him inconspicuous.

Him. The single most overbearingly obvious man in all of Soul Society, inconspicuous.

"Yo, 'Hana! You got the ryoka brats?"

"Yes, thank you, Zaraki-taicho. However I am afraid I was unable to recover our shinigami substitute Kurosaki-kun."

"That sucks," grunted the giant, leaning back into his boulder. "He was the only guy worth fighting in Seireitei. 'Cept perhaps Byakuya, if he wasn't too busy nancing about with his scarves and hair ornaments and pretty pink petals all the time."

The scarred head tilted in consideration, bells jingling. "And mebbe the Soutaicho, 'cept that's mutiny…"

Unohana smiled gently as always. "Are you comfortable there, Zaraki-taicho?"

"Sure. Fighting in the dark ain't never bothered me before. Oi, if yer done rescuing idiots, I don't have to be in this barrier no more, right?" He grinned.

"Of course not. Please feel free to step outside and look around." She watched Kurotsuchi scurry around making adjustments to his faux-Garganta generator. What the adjustments were never seemed clear, but she was sure they were necessary.

Kenpachi ripped off his extra eyepatch, and after a moment's thought ripped off the other one too. He stepped out of the circle of high-tech power absorbing gadgets, making sure to stamp on it heavily as he did so. Behind him Mayuri flinched when he heard the crunch.

His spiritual energy went _fwoomph_.

"At last; I can have a bit of fun and _fight_!" He cricked his neck, raised his serrated sword in both hands and charged across the desert to Las Noches in a cloud of sand dust, blazing with yellow reiatsu and bloodlust – yelling madly all the way.

"Zaraki-san?" called out Retsu in a polite tone of voice.

He pulled up short. "What?!"

"We're leaving now."

"WHAT?!"

**o)0(o**

A short time later the dark eye that stared into another dimension winked shut and vanished, leaving nothing behind.

**o)0(o**

**BLOOMAKES! 3**

For full enjoyment you are advised to follow the YouTube links. Please ROFL responsibly.

**o)0(o**

Tousen: Aizen! I have detected an intruder!

Aizen: Then crush them like worms! Who is it anyway?

Tousen: It's…Unohana Retsu. Will you take care of the ryoka personally?

Aizen: *pales* …you know what? Let's just let her do _whatever_ she likes…

**o)0(o**

~Soul Pop Idol~

.com/watch?v=UnwTWx7f2WM One of the songs mentioned is at 2:12, another two are at 5:12 and 5:30.

~round 1~

Ichigo: *headbanging with his guitar*  
It's like I'm paranoid lookin' over my back  
It's like a whirlwind inside of my head  
It's like I can't stop what I'm hearing within  
It's like the face inside is right beneath my skin

I know I've got a face in me  
Points out all my mistakes to me  
You've got a face on the inside too and  
Your paranoia's probably worse –

Hichigo: I'm a bit worse than paranoia, mate.  
Zangetsu: Honestly Ichigo, that song's been done to death – you disappoint me.  
Hichigo: Quick! Let's gag him!

~round 2~

Zangetsu: *dancing with a microphone* You spin me right round, baby right round, like a record baby right round, round round~!

Ichigo: I think my brain just broke. O_o;;;  
Hichigo: Never again.

~round 3~

Hichigo and Zangetsu: *duet* I wanna see the SUNSHINE AFTER THE RAIN I I I-WANT IT WANT IT! Where is the silver lining shining at the rainbow's end~?

Ichigo: You are both seriously disturbed.

~round 4~  
Ichigo and Zangetsu: *swaying from side to side* Oohh, I've been through the desert on a horse with no name; it felt good to be out of the rain~!  
All: Laaalaaalalalalaaa!

**o)0(o**

Malibu Adverts: Hueco Mundo Style.

Gin: _Imagine if we undead took life as seriously as the rest of the world._

Ichigo: *browsing a clothes stall*  
Szayel Apollo: *Pops up* Lookin' for something special?  
Ichigo: I'm just browsing.  
Szayel Apollo: *Holds out a white shihakusho* This is from de winter collection, OR *holds out another white shihakusho* from de _summer_ collection! This is _haut couture_!  
Ichigo: But they're falling to pieces!  
Grimmjaw: Of course mon! It's the post-godmode look.  
Ichigo: Do you think it'll match my sandals?  
Szayel Apollo: Ooh, I see you wearin' straw sandals. Those are old style, they're from last year.  
Hallibel: I got white sandals on black socks; they're the latest thing around. *shows them off*  
Ishida: *glasses flash* Yeah, Ichigo, you need a vaizard fashion upgrade.  
Ichigo: Dear God save me.

The original: .com/watch?v=zyXt_vzIeR4&feature=related

**o)0(o**

**Chapter notes:** _First off, I'll be using more colours of spirit thread. White for normal; red for shinigami are canon. I'm adding blue for Quincy, black for hollow, and grey for arrancars/vaizards. _

_I mentioned Zabimaru being a 'nue', that's a Japanese chimera with the body of a tanuki (raccoon dog), head of a monkey, legs of a tiger and a snake for a tail. Zabimaru is simpler, but it is canon that he's a nue. They're said to bring misfortune and illness – might explain why Renji is so unlucky. ;D_

_Kajouhi means spiral fire. The zanpakuto shikai is based on a Catherine wheel, which for those that don't know is a spinning disc-shaped firework. And yes, I brought Ashido back because he looks COOL!!_

_To make up for ch9 and ch10 there are 3 omakes this time, but I will be continuing the Malibu style ones because they're hilarious._

With this chapter, 50,000 words of Hell Butterfly have been posted! I'm amazed to have made it this far; and many thanks to everyone for the 7000 hits (holy shiznit), 100 reviews, 50 Story Faves and 50 Story Alerts. They are all extremely appreciated. :3 Please keep reviewing and spread the word if you have any friends that would enjoy HB too, because it's only going to get bigger. =D

At the end of the Hueco Mundo Arc I will be posting a summary chapter of all the things that happened, because it's kinda complicated. I'll also do shout-outs to all reviewers. I might take a break, too, so please vote in the Poll on my bio page if there's anything you'd like to see next.

In other news, I've been accepted to university to study **Chinese and Creative Writing**! WOOHOO!!!

_Alliriyan~*_


	12. Grave Tidings

**Hell Butterfly**

**Grave Tidings**

**~12~**

**o)0(o**

The first thing they saw when the portal opened was Rukia. Well, the very first thing was the inside of Minazuki's mouth, but once they were spat out the glorious sight of Kuchiki Rukia alive and well was what greeted them.

Renji brightened instantly, waving at her casually as this was by no means the first time they'd feared each other dead. Ishida and Sado seemed pleased in their ways, but it was Inoue who ran forwards and hugged her tight. It was closure for the seeming hours she had searched the halls of Las Noches for her friend. "I tried to find you!" she half-laughed in her surprise. "Kuchiki-san! I can't believe you're alive!"

"Well, it's really hard to kill someone that's already dead." She gave no sign of the pitiful condition she'd suffered mere hours ago, already restored by the immense healing skills of the Fourth's lieutenant. Once her brother's kido-imbued scarf had given her a fighting chance, she'd battled all the way to health without once looking back. "Is Ichigo following behind?"

Inoue froze.

"What?"

"Where's Ichigo?"

"I don't know."

"Well who does?"

"P…parts of him are…floating around in a…foreign dimension, possibly?"

Looking at the girl properly, Rukia realized she was going into shock. "Do you mean the Garganta?" asked the shinigami soothingly. She shook her head mutely.

"Rukia," said Orihime in a low voice, right by her ear. It was perhaps the first time she had addressed her as such. "He was torn to pieces and tossed into a nowhere world...by Espada Zero who is named Tenebra Shirojos...and even when his inner Hollow took over, he still couldn't win."

Inoue stepped away, a very worn expression of hopelessness on her face. It sat there comfortably, as if she felt that way frequently and had simply never shown it to others.

"That's where Kurosaki-kun is."

**o)0(o**

"Kuchiki-taicho! Rukia-san is fine now; she went back to the senkai gates."

"Thank you Kotetsu-fukutaicho. This is the second emergency patient. Please see to him personally. He has been fighting alone for the past five hundred years."

Isane looked at the huge bundle of fur and masks in Byakuya's arms and fretted slightly. "Isn't that a Hollow?" She'd heard from Rukia about a Hollow they'd befriended who had turned out to be an Espada. She hoped the Soutaicho wouldn't hear about this. Allowing an arrancar into the most vulnerable area of Seireitei would not look good on her report.

"This is Ashido Kano, a shinigami." He implied that she should take him.

"He looks very tall."

"So are you."

"And heavy."

"You are a lieutenant in the hospital division. I am sure you can lift anyone."

"The fur hide and Hollow masks are very unsanitary."

"I must leave. He may have broken bones; he was trapped under a rock fall for several hours. It would be shameful if he were to die when he had finally made it home again." That was the closest the captain would ever come to saying 'get over it and do your duty'. He draped the unconscious body against Isane, forcing her to wrap her arms around the man before he fell, and allow his chin to hook over her shoulder. A spike from the Hollow mask he wore prodded her cheek. Staggering slightly, Isane glanced around for a vacant gurney or bed.

There were none.

"Um," she said to the empty room, not wanting to jog a man with broken bones by swinging him into a more comfortable carrying position. "Little help?"

**o)0(o**

"But it's Ichigo! We're talking the guy who's so wired to fight he ripped my powers away! The one who gets into all the trouble going and survives it! Th-the human brat who defeated Zaraki and Nii-sama a month after gaining his powers! He's a vaizard! _How could he die when even I managed to kill an Espada?!_"

"I doubt he did," interrupted the Soutaicho, ancient bearer of fire hidden beneath weary granite. His voice was damning, and it was directed at Inoue. "Why would traitors kill each other so early in the game of war?" He leaned heavily on his staff and glared at her out of small, sharp black eyes.

_The next word to leave your mouth will be yes. Any other answer and they all die._

Yes.

A tiny word.

_The only thing that you grasp in your hand is the throats of your comrades that rest on the block of a guillotine whose string you hold._

Small as the trigger that sends bullets through the backs of all her saviours.

_Understand, woman. This is not a negotiation. This is an order._

"I am not a traitor." Quiet, trembling, but only because she was not used to having such steel in her voice.

"The ryokas," growled Yamamoto. "So conveniently causing distractions at the time of Aizen's betrayal. So easily taken hostage by the enemy, and so kindly allowed to heal their fellow spies before departure. So lucky to know an exile who could open a portal into the Hollow's dimension for them. Killing chaff is a favour to Aizen, it keeps his army streamlined. And if all he had to do to ensure my trust in a Vaizard, a Quincy and two suspicious humans was play a song and dance with Urahara, rather than be given the Hougyoku outright; he would be a fool to do otherwise. Know this. I did not send my captains into Hueco Mundo because I feared for your safety, girl. Only because your ability to reverse fate is too dangerous to leave in the hands of a defector."

Orihime found herself staggering backwards, reeling from the pressure of his prejudice. Edging nearer to Ishida and Sado, she tried not to break and reveal just how many of his points were hitting home. Easily kidnapped. Waste of resources. A dangerous…tool.

"What sympathy does a two thousand-year-old death god have for a fifteen-year-old human? Ojii-san, this is a child who only learned about the existence of spirits because her brother became a Hollow and tried to drag her down with him." Ukitake Jyuushiro stepped in smoothly to calm his teacher's ire. "She came to Soul Society to save a friend and to repay a debt to Kurosaki Ichigo. She stayed in the advent of war, despite criticism and trained even against orders. Given that she vanished seconds before a battle-party of Espada inexplicably left, just when they had many of our best soldiers cornered; blackmail comes to mind. Does it not?"

"You of all people know that I am not inclined to forgive disobedience."

"I'm not under your jurisdiction." Inoue's retaliation came from out of the blue, even though she was sorely tempted to hide behind Chad and his stoic armour at this point. "I don't carry a zanpakuto, I'm not dead. I don't come under your authority. Neither does Sado-kun, neither does Ishida-kun." They may have been surprised by her reasoning, but Sora had not run away with a small child without fully explaining how he was allowed to do such a thing. She understood civil rights well. "You have no right to punish us for trying to keep our friends alive!"

"Keep trying to speak like an adult, and Jyuushiro's argument that you are a witless child will fall apart." The patriarch was scornful.

"I never said witless," replied the white-haired man with mild dismay. "She's a wise young girl. She values life. But she _is_ defenceless against Aizen's elite soldiers, and I wonder why this surprises you. Only a captain wouldn't be."

"Please make a report to the Soutaicho, Inoue-san. Explaining is more helpful than arguing, after all." Unohana's rebuke was aimed at everyone. Everyone duly flinched.

Closing her eyes and breathing deeply, Orihime took a moment to organise all that had passed before she opened her mouth and began to speak. Soft, occasionally pained, but always fluent; the testimony flowed out of her. Yet always, the hardest one to convince that she was not a traitor was herself. And it tended to shine through when one did not believe one's own argument.

I restored Grimmjaw's arm.

I helped rebuild Las Noches when Perro Rabioso exploded.

I swore fealty to Aizen.

I did nothing when they turned Karin into an arrancar right before my eyes.

I failed to find and heal Rukia when she was dying.

I revived Needle Prisonn from death even though he nearly killed me.

I watched Ichigo be torn to shreds and never tried to save him.

"I…I can't remember doing anything…anything to help us…at all…" she whispered, horrified, staring blankly at memories no one else could see.

"Then why were you so beaten up when we found you? I thought you'd pissed Aizen off or something." Renji had spoken.

"Well...no, I...when I broke out of the room they kept me in, and starting using Tsubaki to cut through the walls so I could get to Rukia in time...it's a labyrinth, I never ended up in the place I aimed for. But eventually I tripped over the Hougyoku. He keeps it in a green tower and there are barriers around it." She scratched her cheek a little. "I'm not sure. I think I can step through barriers, so I don't know if it was a strong one."

He was gaping at her in disbelief. "So you just walked in and picked it up?"

She blushed. It wasn't coming out right. She wanted to tell them how petrified she'd been, how desperate to help, but that was probably useless information to the harsh Soutaicho.

"No, sort of..." Her hands were twisting around each other, she seemed much discomforted. "And I tried to break it with Tsubaki. He just pinged off it. And then there was only one thing left to do."

"Being?"

"Reject it. With Shun'ou and Ayame. I reversed time on the Hougyoku so that it would be wiped out of existence. But there was actually an Espada guarding it, a Privaron. It was like being inside a shrinking iron maiden." Inoue hunched on herself a little - that memory would be sure to creep her out for a very long time. "Spikes of reiatsu were growing out of the walls and I had to make Tsubaki part of my shield otherwise I would have been skewered."

"Can you do that?" asked Ishida. She shrugged.

"I did...I still haven't asked Tsubaki whether he can fight again after this though. And after that I was safe for a little while, and Souten Kisshun was weakening the Hougyoku. It was like onyx when I found it, but it was turning cloudy very slowly...I didn't really see the Hougyoku when Aizen ripped it out of Rukia, but I'm sure it was being unmade."

Now they were having difficulty expressing their shock. The captains remained stern-faced, but everyone else could hardly believe their ears. This was Inoue. She was meant to sit in a room until they rescued her. But instead she'd been sabotaging the catalyst of Aizen's power?

"B-but...he found me..." She could feel her stomach churning nauseously in recollection. "He was really pissed off. He snapped all the spikes and shattered my shield like it was nothing." She still saw that crackling white faultline in the back of her mind, an easy incision into her safety zone. "And then he took the orb back and beat me up and killed the Privaron because it had been useless. It was called Needle Prisonn. And...I revived it because...I don't know…I wasn't in my right mind anymore." Inoue shrunk in on herself, knowing that would brand her as a traitor all over again. "Then he dragged me to the arena in the centre of Las Noches and everyone had been called there."

She couldn't say the next part. Her mouth was moving, but no sound came out.

"Kurosaki was being pitched against a new Espada there, as if we were just entertainment." Ishida stepped in. "And his opponent was very strange. But eventually Inoue-san shouted out to Kurosaki that the enemy was his little sister Karin." He sounded disbelieving of his own words; gave her an odd look that made her wince. "Kurosaki eventually kept fighting after that..."

"But he stopped surviving." Chad rumbled gravely.

"Why his sister? Was that on purpose so he wouldn't be able to fight back?" asked Jyuushiro, frowning.

"I don't know," murmured Inoue, biting her fingers fretfully. "It was something to do with a Vasto Lorde. Sometime after I was kidnapped a Vasto Lorde came to Las Noches to join _his_ army, but after his mask broke he just erupted with reiatsu and died."

They remembered her mentioning this before; that she'd helped rebuild after 'Perro Rabioso'.

"It must be to do with reiatsu," stated Unohana, appearing to know more than anyone else could attempt to guess at. "Kurosaki-kun had an unusual potential for reiatsu, certainly his grew incredibly quickly. Perhaps they needed another like that after losing a Vasto Lorde, and looked to his family in case it was genetic."

"She didn't know what she was doing!" insisted Inoue suddenly. "They cut her mind out; Karin didn't even know it was him! She only fought at all because she was in danger!"

The Commander-General sighed heavily. "And you think this petty attack on the Orb of Distortion forgives all the times you worked in Aizen's favour?"

The girl looked away. "That's your choice..." she replied in brittle tones.

"How close did you come to destroying it?"

"I have no idea, I know nothing about it. But he won't be able to create super-soldiers again for a while. I'm certain he won't be able to create another Karin, not the way it is now."

"So the substitute really is dead." Yamamoto exchanged a tired glance with his captains. "I did order him not to retrieve you. It was not a task for children to attempt. Retsu could have retrieved you as easily without his presence in Hueco Mundo."

She seemed about to cry. "How could he have known that? They just wanted to save me, even though I only went there so they'd be safe a little longer. Kurosaki-kun defeated two or three of your captains the first time he came here. He has no real idea what any of you are capable of. He...he had...a skewed view of Soul Society, because he was too strong. He thought he could save me the way he saved everyone else."

"He was wrong." That was the founder of Seireitei's final judgement.

And, of course, he was right.

**o)0(o**

Malibu Adverts: Hueco Mundo Style.

Gin: _Imagine if we undead took life as seriously as the rest of the world._

Bibip beepi bip bop!

Ichigo pulled the rattling mobile phone out of his shihakusho and flipped it open. "_Moshi moshi_?" he rasped.

"Is that you Ichigo?" asked Mizuiro. "Have you got bad reception?"

"_No, I'm in vaizard mode!_" he screeched.

"Oh…kay…well are you free for the cinema this weekend? Everyone's going to see Ponyo."

"_Yeah, well I would…_" mused the scraping alien voice of Hichigo. "_But I'm a bit too dead right now._"

B e e e e e e e e e ~ ~ ~

Mizuiro had hung up. Traitor.

**o)0(o**

"Hah! Your attack was 0.3 seconds late!"

"Shut up! At least _my_ mask lasts longer than ten seconds!"

"My mask have _fifteen hours_ battery time."

"Ha, that is so yesterday. My own zanpakuto has wireless internet!"

The arguing vaizards stopped fighting and stared at Urahara.

"What? I'm Tech Squad! It does Bluetooth and Blu Ray too!"

"Well we use Red Ray," sniffed Ulquiorra proudly. He had an old-fashioned mobile phone hanging by its strap from the white spike on his mask fragment. He was sidling towards a portal. "I'm going hands-free. Hello, Yammy?" The Garganta swallowed him. "Can you hear me now?!"

**o)0(o**

"Oh mon," wailed Dondochakka, pulling up behind a queue of Pesche, Hallibel, Gin and the Hollow gecko as they waited for Lunuganga to move. The wide, endless, empty desert stretched invitingly all around them. "Oh mon, it's TOTAL GRIDLOCK!"

**o)0(o**

_Please please please review! It's very odd to get hundreds of hits and only a handful of reviews, I can't tell if everyone likes it. All crit welcomed._

_Thanks for reading! Arc 1 ends next chapter!_

_Alliriyan~*_


	13. Lazarus

**Hell Butterfly**

**Lazarus**

**~13~**

**o)0(o**

The slowly opening door draping a scarf of warm light over her cold and frightened form....

Isshin looking at her, and then behind her for Ichigo...back to her and reading the truth on her face.

The way his cheery features had crumpled was yet another in a long line of heavy blows to her heart.

And the way Yuzu had flipped out, beating furiously at Inoue with tiny fists before her father dragged her away and embraced her tightly...that had broken it.

Orihime had been incapable of remembering any other word beyond sorry.  
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

It made no difference, she already knew it didn't. Apologies hadn't changed a thing when Sora had died, and then it had been Isshin's regret that he couldn't save her brother.

They must be even now.

Equality hurt.

**o)0(o**

Unohana had told her to come here rather than her empty and unprotected apartment, though how a family of which three members had fallen to Hollows could keep her safe was a mystery. Tomorrow she would ask Sado or Ishida if they could lodge her instead.

But for now she was in Ichigo's room.

After her confession he had invited her in, asking no questions (why the white dress, where had they been, what had happened, how had he died, when?); only informing her that she had missed dinner (7pm sharp). With surprisingly calm practicality he had designated his dead son's abode as the new spare room. And then she had been left to her own devices as Isshin concentrated on his last remaining child.

None of them were in a fit state to talk at the moment.

Inoue perched on the edge of a Western-style bed, hugging the empty Kon plushie to her chest. She didn't know where the gikon was now, but he'd probably be highly upset at having missed such an opportunity. Her mind flitted from thought to thought, unable to concentrate on any whether they were serious or not.

The room was strangely fresh, a strong smell of disinfectant and dust dislodged by cleaning in the air. There was a paler patch of carpet near the desk. Isshin had warned her that Karin had suffered a heart-attack in her brother's room, before apologising that he had nowhere else to put her as Yuzu needed space and the clinic beds were off-limits to guests. He never asked why she seemed unsurprised that Karin was also gone far away.

They must have scrubbed and scrubbed, trying to erase the event.

Looking around the odd, sanitized bedroom; she could already tell that there would be no scraps of Kurosaki-kun left. Dust wouldn't work. She'd found a comb, but it seemed he'd never used it, so no strands of hair would yield DNA for her to 'heal' back into a whole person.

It was hopeless.

Tipping sideways onto the bed, Orihime began to cry. She'd been holding back for hours, but she was alone now, and no one would be burdened by it. Hiding her face in the pillow, she remembered that last and first time in this place, saying farewell to a sleeping Ichigo; wishing that she'd dared give him that kiss. It truly had been the final goodbye.

Yet so deep down she had prayed it wouldn't be.

The tears streamed down endlessly, body racked by great gasping sobs. She'd even managed to bring an Espada back from death! Why couldn't she do the same for someone she actually cared about?

About to knock on the door and proffer a warm drink he'd made for her, Isshin heard the muffled wailing, lowered his hand, and shuffled away down the dark corridor.

**o)0(o**

Sometime in the small hours of the morning Inoue awoke with a gasp. She stared at the darkness, fearing that those nightmares were still lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce and rip her throat out.

Dreams of monsters and Hollows and war beneath the desert. Places she'd never been, creatures she'd never imagined. Where had they come from? She felt exhausted despite the hours of sleep.

Fumbling around for a bedside lamp, she flicked the switch but nothing happened. Perhaps it was unplugged.

"Shun Shun Rikka?" called the girl quietly, needing to combat a gnawing sense of loneliness. They spun out of her hair, emitting gentle light like fireflies. A few hovered beside her, giving tiny hugs.

"What's going to happen now?" asked Baigon in the fairy-version of a rumbling voice. His stolid, sumo-sized proportions made a small dent as he landed on the duvet.

Inoue shrugged and shook her head wordlessly.

"We can't bring him back from nothing." Shun'ou flicked his blonde ponytail, looking at his counterpart Ayame. "Can we? If it was one of us, we could learn to because we originate from you, 'Hime-chan. But for others we need something to work from."

"We have to set parameters. We have to know what we're dealing with." Ayame's explanation was hushed, she seemed to hide deeper inside her toadstool-patterned carapace than usual.

Their mistress sighed forlornly, not having expected any other answer to her unspoken question. Stroking one of Hinagiku's purple wings, she closed her eyes. "Tsubaki?"

He twitched guiltily. "What?" He was the furthest from her, fidgeting with a pencil taller than himself from the late Ichigo's desk.

"I'm sorry for demoting you. Will you be able to fight again?"

"Demotion?!" muttered Hinagiku, squeakily rebellious. "I hardly think shielding from all harm is a demotion!"

The little ninja-sprite dragged a hand down the pencil's length, and it clattered on the table in two halves. "I'm fine," he sniffed. "The only problem is _you_ being so weak-hearted."

"It's not easy for me to rip a person in half!" hissed Orihime suddenly, defensive. "Is that a crime? Yes, if I was strong like everyone else I could have sliced up all the arrancars and rescued Karin and saved Ichigo, _yes, I get it_! Do you have to keep reminding me? I can't look a living being in the eye and…and _do_ that to them…"

Hurt, she buried her head in her arms and refused to look at the fairies again.

"When you said goodbye to Berry-tan, didn't you take a lock of his hair?" mused Lily, who had adopted the vaizard Mashiro's nickname for Ichigo. She was trying to defuse the heavy atmosphere. It was odd to see a cerise-haired fairy in a blue swimsuit act so seriously.

"Yeah, yeah!" Ayame suddenly became excited. "You said it was a tradition from another country! A lover's token, right?"

Inoue blushed scarlet at the words. "I saw that on some stupid TV show. But I don't have it anymore; they took all my things away." She teased the now petal-less hairgrips out of her tangled auburn hair, holding the turquoise-enamelled metal out on her palm. "I put it behind the pins but it fell out, see?" Her voice was wavering, as if her hopes had leapt for a split second.

Tsubaki had carved one of the pencil pieces into a small heap of shavings and now kicked the other half off the desk. He was inexplicably in a huff. Perhaps he was reacting to subconscious anger from Orihime.

Stalking towards her, he stopped dead and glared. If looks could kill, she'd have been cremated last week. Leaping into the air, he made one frustrated circuit of the ceiling before swooping and alighting on Inoue's head. He hit her once, and again for good measure. "Stupid idiot!"

She blinked away tears but said nothing, because at the end of the day she deserved it, and far, far greater punishments beside.

"Don't fucking lose it again, alright?!" grumbled Tsubaki, and a pinch of bright ginger fluff drifted down to land on her folded arms.

She stared at it blankly. As uncomprehendingly as if it was a mutant orange spore that had just grown out of her dress. After a minute or so she stopped breathing.

The Shun Shun Rikka were beginning to grin widely.

"That…um…that's…"

Tsubaki nodded smugly.

The smile that dawned on her face came like sunrise on a century of midnight. The six flowers found themselves blazing with golden fires as her heart leapt immeasurably high.

She was laughing, hand covering her mouth in disbelief but still laughing with all her soul.

**o)0(o**

The doors clicked shut with finality, but Ichigo could still hear the ferocious rain drumming against the city of glass outside. A seam of golden light still leaked in through a hairsbreadth gap. Tiredness sent his vision blurring in and out of focus, the black chains were only growing tighter and tighter. But he could still hear the…

The…

There was a word for it.

Right?

A word?

_Patter patter patter boom boom boom patter patter patter._

That had a name.

He couldn't remember anymore. Never mind. _Never mind_.

He could feel himself letting go, relaxing completely into oblivion.

The noise beyond had stopped.

Noise?

What was noise?

He was breathing out, a long, slow, calming breath; but he couldn't make his lungs suck in again. Couldn't stop breathing out.

A strange voice was cackling, but he no longer heard anything. He seemed tranquil. A sleeping face smiling like a child who had never been crushed under the corpse of his mother. The permanent frown had been soothed away.

Outside, the clouds had ceased to roll and seethe. The rain had stopped, but it hadn't gone away.

It was suspended in mid-fall, suffused by that mysterious amber light, a billion beads of gold floating in the atmosphere.

The shattered bone fragments of a Hollow's mask were twitching back together, reforming with the peal of wild laughter.

And at the base of a single storm-grey skyscraper, the doors were creeping open again.

**o)0(o**

The first thing to appear was another scrap of hair. Then a fat globule of blood hovering over the plain blue bedspread whilst the chambers, valves and muscle of a heart were woven into existence around it. Shards of bone came next, clicking together like ivory jenga tiles until long, curved shanks and ribs slowly became visible. Tendons, tissues knitting into organs, vertebrae and a delicate, intricate web of nerves spinning out from each one. Lungs swelled bubble by bubble around a network of splitting branches. A strange, rippled grey mass quickly ensconced by the plates of a cranium. Jelly-like fat appearing in a slick layer over the torso, not as much as expected; though Ichigo was very lean and often recovering from something so perhaps it was less than surprising. Inoue found herself squeamishly mesmerised, identifying this kidney or that brain stem and many things she'd never heard of until she was sure she'd never need another biology lesson.

Certain substances poured into the physical plane from some unseen reservoir all at the same time. Blood, a few pints, looking like a lot more as it undulated through the air like a drop of dye diffusing into water. A flood of reiatsu and with it threads of black, white and red. His shihakusho, in the bankai form that it had been destroyed in, filaments that matched the strength of spiritual power weaving thicker and faster as more and more of his energy returned. Just in time to shield a few immodest areas as well.

The quality of the reiatsu began to warp, darken. Without being asked Hinagiku, Lily, Baigon and Tsubaki leapt back into their new golden pyramid, to protect the sensitive, sleeping Kurosakis from this storm of vaizard energy.

"You're not tired?" asked Ayame of Inoue. Regeneration as opposed to reassembling, not to mention the sheer volume of work to do when resurrecting such a dense soul as Ichigo's…it was a miracle she hadn't collapsed from fatigue at the skeletal stage.

"No," laughed Orihime. Every cell that appeared was only making her feel more drunk on ecstasy. Alive. _Alive_. She was bringing him back from a dead dimension, _saving_ him, repaying him, but most importantly not helplessly losing him the way she had her brother.

She was spitting in the eye of fate. She was taking control over life and death. And that didn't scare her as much as it should have.

"Well…" muttered Tsubaki in a don't-get-cocky tone, despite being the personification of her ego; "It's all reiryoku. It would be far harder if we were dealing with physical particles instead of spirit particles."

"Don't be such a downer," replied Lily, teasing him.

"Skin…" whispered Inoue in awe, silencing them.

Skin. And now she could see the jaw-dropping fine detail of this rebirth. Skin, a little weathered, a little tanned, taut with health and slightly crinkled around all those martial arts-strengthened joints. Peppered with faint, near-invisible scars from a decade of karate lessons and deeper ones from a year of part-time soul reaping. Glancing back to his face, there were eyebrows, eyelashes, tiny creases on his forehead from his funny, scary expressions. A spiky mass of orange on his crown. All the fine details that told his personality; that made him Ichigo.

Shun'ou sounded tired as he warned her there was still a lot to be done. Neuronal pathways, memories, fine motor nerves, capillaries, connections, pathways, essential acids and chemicals and infinite tiny intracellular microstructures.

"Yes," she murmured, still pouring out her reiatsu into the Shun Shun Rikka, heart still overflowing with determination and joy. "Yes. Of course." He looked finished. That was Ichigo, right there. She wondered when he'd wake up. She wondered if she had time…

Leaning down through the barrier of amber light, she lingered anxiously, hesitantly over him, just like last time. And drifted closer, closer; her hair brushing his cheek.

Feeling embarrassed, she closed her eyes, and blindly dipped the last few inches until their mouths met.

It didn't feel any different. His lips were cool, lacking pulse as her Souten Kesshun trapped him in suspended animation; he did not breathe. Inoue stayed there for a second or two, surprised by the lifeless sensation after so much time spent resurrecting him, then pulled away. _He will wake up, right?_ She wanted to demand of her winged proxies, but to voice that doubt would only hinder their difficult work.

Ichigo's eyes snapped open.

"_It's a bit late for mouth-to-mouth…I'm already dead, bitch!_"

His eyes were black. And the mutated voice crawling out of his cold mouth was that of a Hollow.

Orihime leapt away with a shriek of horror, back slamming into the wardrobe.

The Hollow-Ichigo, Other-Ichigo, Not-Ichigo scrabbled with weak hands, trying to pull himself up with an unfinished body. "_Aww,_" it cooed in that inhuman, zombie-cockroach accent. "_I didn't know you cared so much._"

"I don't!" yelped the girl, trying desperately to merge into the wood behind her and disappear. "I don't; I don't love you at all!"

The black-eyed Ichigo lunged for her, rebounding with a hiss of burnt flesh off the shields surrounding him. "_Keep on lying to yourself; I'll bite your tongue out._"

A single flinch transformed all of her happiness into uncompromised fear. The golden arc of healing radiance shattered, but the triangular barriers remained steadfast, more accustomed to appearing when she was scared.

As Ayame and Shun'ou's twin influence broke, so did the curative coma. The Hollow shuddered and collapsed when its body gave in to reality's pressure. Bruises were blooming all over the visible skin: blood trying to move where there were no pathways. Limbs twitched and spasmed at the behest of a half-repaired brain. It could no longer draw breath and a strangled imitation of a scream gurgled limply in the silence before dawn.

"I – I won't heal you…" vowed Inoue, trembling uncontrollably as everything slipped madly out of her grasp. "I'll let you die again… I only wanted Ichigo back!"

"_I _am_ Ichigo_," drawled the humanoid monster round a paralytic tongue. "_That's reeaal unconditional_." It spat the words out weakly, yellow irises rolling back with agony till only the black sclera showed. A mask was drawling over its face, a vain attempt to tap into its own regenerating abilities.

The reiatsu it gave off was poisonous.

There was no more time to think.

"Tsubaki!" If she didn't stop the Hollow now, it would ravage Karakura, starting with Kurosaki-kun's family. She _could not_ allow that. "Koten Zanshun. I – "

"_I'm going, I'm going…bitch!_" the Hollow snarled. She bit back the final deadly word, 'reject'.

Ichigo's eyes faded to white, the familiar hazel irises returned, and his spine arched in pain. The ghost of a scream scraped from his malfunctioning throat.

Orihime collapsed to the floor, hyperventilating. "Quick," she sobbed. Gasping. "Quick, before he dies again. Souten K – Keh – Kesshun… I reject!"

Bathed once more in angelic light, the welcome return to numbness sent Ichigo's conscious streaming back into oblivion.

**o)0(o**

Although the sun was not yet on the horizon, the midnight blue sky was beginning to bleach in preparation for dawn's colours when Orihime finally finished.

The Shun Shun Rikka fluttered erratically towards the bed and collapsed in a snoozing heap the moment they landed, curling up on the duvet now spread cosily over Ichigo's complete, fully-functioning, perfect, living, breathing, sleeping body.

The very instant their powers cut out, Inoue was hit by exhaustion in the abstract form of a ton of bricks. Stumbling towards them, she too curled up beside the bed, her head leaning on its edge and one hand loosely clasping Ichigo's. It slid tiredly to her side a second later. But she had felt his pulse, and was satisfied.

Without even the energy to mumble a 'thank you' to her fairies, a deep sleep overtook her and she fell back into the realms of nightmares.

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	14. HB: The Abridged Series! Arc One

Hell Butterfly: Arc One: Hueco Mundo: The Abridged Series  
aka The Dreaded Recap Episode

Ch01 - Overload

We set the scene with the rescue gang consisting of a strawberry, a geek and a Mexican stoic dithering in front of a wormhole and wondering whether they _really_ want to go to Hueco Mundo to rescue Orihime.

In said dimension a hyena-like Vasto Lorde pays Las Noches a visit. His reiatsu control is even more abysmal than Ichigo's and tends to blast craters in whatever he's standing on. Before allowing him access, the third Espada Tia Hallibel has to test his badassery levels. He passes.

Back at the Kurosaki Clinic we find Karin trying to convince Yuzu of several important notions:  
a) Ichigo does not hate her cooking  
b) Ichigo is in fact a monster-hunting zombie, and  
c) Bostov is male.  
As we can see she saved the worst revelation for last.

Returning to the depths of Las Noches, our new Vasto arrancar introduces himself as Perro Rabioso and spontaneously combusts about ten seconds later. His reiatsu levels were OVER NINE THOUSAND and he just couldn't hack it. His epic fail takes down half the castle with it. Our baddies look at the resulting mess and realise they're gonna need a bigger dustpan.

In Urahara's secret lair, Ichigo asks him to come up with a cover story for his family and friends (blissfully unaware that most of them know his secret and half of them are stalking him right now). Having finally worked up the courage, they dive into the Garganta.

-

Ch02 – Fall Out

We start off by skipping over the fights with Iceringer and Demoura, in which Ishida and Chad kick ass offscreen; then proceed to Aizen making cunning plots with Szayel Apollo, the geeky carnival reject Espada.

It seems that the Hougyoku has grown too powerful, so in the future Aizen will have to use it on weaklings and noobs. However for best results they need a flawed soul – one that has way too much reiatsu by nature and can therefore deal with the pressure of the Hougyoku. Ichigo and Starrk are good examples of this, but where can Aizen find fresh meat?

Yuzu is still in denial about Bostov/Kon's true gender.

Ichigo and co. are getting bored of the sand, so Lunuganga appears to spice it up for them. Cue tornadoes.

Karin gets one of her headaches, only today it is the Early Warning Migraine of Foreshadowing of Doom. Yuzu legs it. Karin searches Ichigo's room for zombie weapons, finding none. King Espada the Second (Barragan) materialises in their house and conveniently finds the flawed, weak soul with great potential that he was looking for right under his nose.

Barragan punches Karin out of her body, raising his sword…

We cut to Isshin, Ishida and Urahara having a powwow in a café. They argue over whether their sons are idiots or heroes, whilst Urahara prays they forget that most of the series' troubles are his fault. The bickering escalates until Ishida Sr. throws a tantrum and declares that he is the only Quincy with a conscience; because he neglects his powers in order to protect the Balance of Souls. Good for him!

-

Ch03 – King's Burial

Ichigo meets Nel in the tornado. There is a great deal of shouting. When it drags on too long Lunuganga drowns them all in quicksand just to get some peace.

Crying out for help when her father and brother are too distant to even notice her jeapordy, Karin is killed by Barragan. He then performs a Dark Konsou, carves a Hollow hole straight through her brain and lets her sink into the gap between the dimensions.

Isshin realises something is wrong and legs it back home, but too late. = (

Showing far better timing, Rukia rescues Ichigo and co. by trapping Lunuganga in an ice cube. There follows a touching reunion in which Ichigo gets punched several times. Just as they relax, the sand Hollow strikes back and drags them all into the Menos Forest beneath the desert.

Isshin and Yuzu grieve for Karin.

-

Ch04 – Potential for Disaster

Orihime monologues.

Ichigo's crew fights an ever-increasing horde of Hollows until, surrounded by hungry Gillians, Nel scares them all away with a single shout. Gosh, how mysterious.

BUT WAIT! Where has Rukia vanished to in all the chaos?!

Meanwhile a coroner has visited the Kurosaki clinic to determine the cause of Karin's death. Isshin feels guilt for not being there when she needed him, and Yuzu is dreaming of her twin being trapped in a dark nowhere.

Ashido finds Rukia in the forest. Ashido is a few sandwiches short of a picnic after five hundred years of loneliness and mass-murdering of Hollows after he got lost in Hueco Mundo. Once he believes she's really real; and they've bonded over an adjuchas killing or two, they search for and rejoin the main group. After he shows them all the way to the surface, rocks fall and he gets trapped under an avalanche. Shame.

Inoue has the Hougyoku waved under her nose, tantalisingly out of reach. Tousen summons a swarm of hell butterflies and plucks Karin out of the inter-dimension where they live. Aizen upgrades her from zero to Espada Zero, and we get our first glimpse of Tenebra Shirojos. Her mind is gone, her teeth are sharp, and her instinct to fight supreme. Yay!

-

Ch05 – Prayer vs Declaration

Once everyone reaches Las Noches, they find themselves halted by a very high wall. An Espada kindly blasts a hole in it for them. This guy is Nnoitra: he's out for blood, and he's never heard of feminism.

Neliel Tu Oderschvank godmodes and proceeds to teach him a lesson in girlpower. In the end she nukes him with a condensed triple Gran Rey Cero – because there is no such thing as overkill in Bleach!

-

Ch06 – Red Moon

We skip jauntily past the Privaron fights, whistling all the way.

Then it's Rukia vs Shiba Kaien, her former fukutaicho who got eaten by a Hollow. This quickly devolves into Rukia vs Espada Aaronieres, soul-munching Son of Cthulu and hands-down ugliest arrancar. No wonder he steals faces!

Nel returns to being Aizen's loyal soldier, for now…

When Rukia falters and is stabbed clean through, her zanpakuto Sode no Shirayuki makes an awesome entrance and teaches her the proper way to use her third dance Shirafune. Instead of waiting for her enemies to defrost with only minor skin damage, she can now use Shirafune to stab them whilst they're immobilized by ice!

Battle won, Rukia freezes her wounds and blacks out.

-

Ch07 - Saboteuse

Chad is quietly angsting over the fact that he may be turning into a Hollow.

Inoue is trying not to angst, which she's had a lot of practice at.

As the rescue team regroups, Renji comes pelting down the hall with a crowd of Exequias on his tail. Everybody runs for their lives.

Inoue breaks out of her comfy prison cell, hoping to find and heal Rukia. Instead she trips over the Hougyoku, allowing her to sabotage it as was her secret plan all along. But it's not until midway through the rejection that she discovers there was a Privaron guarding the Hougyoku! It's like being trapped within a shrinking inside-out hedgehog, so Inoue uses Tsubaki to upgrade her shield so it completely surrounds her.

Starrk and Lilynette find one of Chad's skull punches carved into the walls of Las Noches. They reminisce.

Unskewered, Orihime continues to unmake the Hougyoku until Aizen gatecrashes her rebellion. And he is hella pissed off.

He kills Needle Prisonn, smashes Inoue's shield, and beats her to within an inch of her life, Mr Burns style. Inoue then tries to resurrect the Privaron, because she just can't face the trauma anymore.

In the omake the Hougyoku conquers the three worlds no-handed and Urahara reveals it was his secret weapon all along! He has a kickass stripy crown. Woot!

-

Ch08 – Tenebra Shirojos

Suddenly Aizen is back in control – all the ryoka have been herded to a giant stadium filled with arrancars. Ichigo tries to grab everyone and run for it. This does not succeed.

Ichigo's scheduled opponent is Tenebra Shirojos, who is small, creepy, and can only count to three. They fight slowly, gauging each other's strength, until Inoue screams out to Ichigo that the girl he's fighting is Karin.

In the meantime, Byakuya has come to rescue his own little sister. She's barely alive, and he tells her to abandon all hope for her friends, before they scarper out of Hueco Mundo.

Back at the coliseum, Ichigo has realised that Karin's counting was actually calling out his name – "Ichi-nii-san". He has a small nervous breakdown.

In his soulscape, Zangetsu and Hichigo yell at him to get it together. So he does – CLIFFHANGER! =O

-

Ch09 – Pyrrhic Victory

Ichigo's strike lands, but Karin's regeneration is even faster than his own. It promises to be a tense battle. Or it would, if only the girl knew how to use her zanpakuto. Ulquiorra teaches her by transferring memories into her via a crushed eyeball. More on that later!

Deep within the tatters of Karin's soul, a demonic caterpillar is awakening. It has two faces, one for the inner Hollow and one for the zanpakuto spirit. However her conscious is nowhere to be found, so the caterpillar takes over the fight. It reveals its name to be Naraku (which means Hell) and its shikai command as Condemn. Creepy…

Just as Ichigo lashes out, Tenebra wakes up and releases her swords. She is an arrancar with a shikai instead of a Resurrección – is it due to the Hougyoku pushing the limits?

They have an epic battle of awesome.

Karin's swords slice straight through matter without resistance, as the blades are more like sharp-edged portals to that nowhere-dimension. She takes a massive chunk out of Ichigo, and his inner Hollow is forced to tag in.

The first job is to regenerate, and that means big things with TEETH. Hichigo is a savage psycho and it looks like Espada Zero is royally screwed.

But the next second, Hichigo has been shredded alive and is nothing more than a smear of blood on the floor. FML.

Karin falls back into a doll-state and forgets he was ever there. *sob*

-

Ch10 – Rain City

In Ichigo's inner world a ferocious storm is attacking the glass skyscrapers as he dies. His life got flipped-turned upside down, and gravity is freakier than ever. Black chains are crawling everywhere, a cracked moon is falling up out of the sky. Zangetsu leaps into it and abandons his wielder, travelling back to his own world. Traitor!

The chains are dragging Ichigo into the building, and his Hollow is crumbling away. Before they both vanish, it tells him that his soul is going to sleep and his memories are being locked away, ending on the mysterious jeer: "Didja think this city was empty, your Majesty?"

As the doors of the tower slam shut on Ichigo, there's a flash of golden light – and anyone who missed THAT piece of foreshadowing needs their eyes checked. xD But lots of people guessed it so well done.

-

Ch11 – Light Brigade

Unohana is pure awesome. Everyone knows this, and finally we see why. As she ninjas around Las Noches with perfectly disguised reiatsu, she uses her zanpakuto Minazuki to melt all enemies that have the bad luck to cross her path.

The invaders are all lounging around Inoue's prison cell, bemoaning their fate. Unohana rescues the rescuers, convincing them to climb into the mouth of Minazuki despite the fact he just vaporised a Fraccion with his bad breath.

Byakuya and Rukia try to save Ashido from the landslide, but he's already dug himself, spouting gibberish all the way. His shikai is whirl, Kajouhi, and it turns his zanpakuto into a Catherine wheel of fiery DOOM. Ashido and Byakuya fight.

Zaraki doesn't get to.

Everyone heads back to Seireitei.

-

Ch12 – Grave Tidings

Everyone is reunited and the tragic news about Ichigo is shared.

Ashido is dumped with Isane.

Yamamoto goes all Sherlock-taicho and demands that Inoue prove she's not part of an elaborate conspiracy and that Ichigo hasn't been working for Aizen all along.

He's convinced eventually, but reminds everyone that if people had only obeyed him, Unohana could still have rescued Inoue as easily as she did everyone; without a single casualty.

Oohhh, _burn._

-

Ch13 - Lazarus

Inoue has the nerve to stay at the Kurosaki Clinic despite being the indirect cause of Ichigo's demise…and in the early morning hours, she revives him from oblivion.

Miraculously given a second chance, she kisses him as he sleeps…but Hichigo wakes up and is less than impressed, and more "I KILL YOU!". He buggers off again, but only once she threatens to leave him to die due to his incomplete recreation.

Dawn comes, job done. WOOHOO!

-

-

-

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**DECLARATIONS OF LOVE AND DEDICATIONS AND STUPH TO MY BETAS:**

Pippin's Socks! Fiercest! OhBreadsticks! And Dan-chan!

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	15. When the Living Haunt the Dead

**Hell Butterfly**

**When the Living Haunt the Dead**

**~15~**

**o)0(o**

The rising sun set her hair on fire, it glowed warm and bright as her heart and magic. The dawn lent false colour to cover her exhaustion. It gave Inoue a brief and piercing glory. But Ichigo found the picture blurred, distorted; as tears poured helplessly down his face.

Karin was dead. He had failed. Aizen was infinitely beyond his power to protect.

Yet before he could think twice his legs had already stumbled out of bed and carried him towards the girls' room. He had to check. He had to make sure.

_It could still be a lie_.

**o)0(o**

Shadows made the kindest blindfolds, obscuring his vision of the empty bed on the left side of the room until light crept in from the hallway. But it couldn't last. All too soon it was clear to see.

Her absence.

Inoue hadn't lied or been mistaken, and his intuition had been correct.

Nothing had felt so damning since the night of rain and Masaki's blank eyes; empty face smiling down at him. At least he had been an ignorant child then, allowed to err, even if the blunder led to murder.

But now he was a substitute shinigami, a super-powered god, and above all the guardian of Karakura Town. From his revived presence at home it didn't take an idiot to realise that he'd never been needed in Hueco Mundo. Inoue was back in the human world. Without his help. And his stubborn heroics meant he had been gone when Karin was in danger.

Even the Soutaicho had warned him to stay!

The sheets had been placed immaculately where Karin always left them crumpled. There were a few of her favourite toys and books arranged on the bedspread, as Yuzu had gone through her twin's belongings; trying to reconnect in her loneliness. The gentle scent of flowers filled the air, from mourning bouquets laid upon the blue pillow. Farewell gifts from friends and neighbours.

How much did it hurt for Yuzu to face that every day?

Turning to his sister, he watched her sleeping face for a few minutes. Tiny frowns flickered over it, she shifted uncomfortably and what she was holding slid from her grasp.

Oh god.

It was the strawberry doll. Hadn't he hidden that in the attic somewhere? With its strawberry blonde, long ginger hair…and the strawberry patterned dress…and the pointed plastic arms and legs like a Barbie in rigour mortis…it was something he'd played with all the time before he learned about gender stereotypes. Back when he was a Mama's boy, and she'd bought it for him to tease him about his name's other connotation, and his hair, and because its cheerful smile was as wide as his used to be. Because the twins she was expecting could inherit it, right? He'd never quite managed to throw it away, because it always reminded him of her laughter even when the other details had faded.

Was that _still_ how Yuzu defined him?

Ichigo-chan suddenly slipped off the bed, her ponytail flying – he lunged to her rescue- !

A thud, unusually loud in the silence of the night, woke Yuzu from dreams of endless white corridors. In the dark hush, an invisible hand pushed down on her pillow, and a familiar person whispered "Hey, Yuzu…"

She bolted upright with a muddled squeal of terrified joy. "Nii-chan's ghost?!"

"Shit!" swore the disembodied voice. "I'm not in my body? Ah crap, Kon better not have kidnapped it again…"

"Don't swear Nii-chan!" chided his little sister, half-covering her ears and searching for the telltale heat-haze of wandering spirits. She was muggy from sleep. "How are you here anyway? …Did you come to say… goodbye?" The last word cracked in her throat. Then she spotted the doll floating eerily in midair. "…Are you possessing Ichigo-chan?"

Ichigo-chan drifted nearer, her orange nylon hair wafting on a hidden breeze. The reply was somewhat strangled between horror and inappropriate laughter. "…No."

There was a brief silence, then the creak of springs as Ichigo slumped on the edge of her mattress and hung his head in his hands. He was staring at the empty bed opposite.

"Karin is really gone?" he asked in sad disbelief.

"…You weren't here…"

And the soft accusation stabbed him with icy guilt.

Yuzu echoed his silence, eventually managing a brave reply. "But you know, Nii-chan, I think she's gone somewhere better now. I used to dream that she was in shadowy, black places; but now my dreams are all white castles. That's Heaven, right?"

Thank god she couldn't see him wincing right now.

Or the tears he just couldn't halt.

"…Perhaps."

"W-will…and will you send her my love…when you meet her there?"

That shocked him. She'd been told he was dead?

He'd have to fetch his body back, and maybe they could fix it with a memory patch, or…

"Please don't go, Nii-chan!" She tried to grab for him and keep him there, unable to bear another loss. Her hands ghosted straight through him. If she'd been capable of viewing it, she'd have seen his face more surprised than ever before in his life.

Yuzu's innocence had gone. Her trust in the world and her constant happiness. He could clearly see she had no energy left.

And something deep within Ichigo stood up and said, calmly and emphatically, 'No.'

"Yuzu, I'm not dead. Not permanently anyway."

"I can't wait around for your reincarnation, Nii-chan! Just don't leave, stay here, _please!_"

Heart-wrenching. Inoue Sora must have felt this way before it devolved into hatred. Ichigo hesitated to embrace her; her reiatsu was so faint she could barely see nor touch him, and he was not keen to accidentally boost her power the way he had so many others. He wanted to keep her far away from the realm of the dead, unnoticed by Hollows, and freely alive.

"You…you could haunt us… Like the other clinic ghosts do…" She was sobbing loudly now. That voice in the back of his head was still saying no. No to letting this pass, leaving her in the dark all alone. "Because Karin-chan just left without saying goodbye. There was a monster…"

Her brother flinched and gritted his teeth, the crumpled frown back in full force. Monsters. Hollows. He may have once shouted at Rukia that not everything happened because of Hollows, but they seemed happy to prove him wrong. The image of Tenebra Shirojos flashed back into his mind and burned there.

"Do you remember the night a truck crashed into our house?"

The unexpected question halted her weeping, though she had to scrub away fresh tears with the back of her hand every so often. "Yes?" she replied shakily, not sure where this was going.

"Yuzu, do you _really remember_ what _really happened_?"

She was silent, subdued; then answered again with a quiet _yes_. She had fainted for part of the invisible otherworldly scuffle, but yes, she knew there hadn't been a truck, and that they hadn't slept through a crash, and Karin had filled her in on the rest a few days later when their memories cleared.

Ichigo took a deep breath.

"On that night, I met a shinigami named Kuchiki Rukia who had come to protect Karakura from the monsters…"

**o)0(o**

Ichigo ran through the empty early morning streets of Karakura. Destination: Urahara Shouten.

The air was fresh and damp. The exercise felt good, really good, reinforcing the miraculous fact that he was alive. Come to think of it, although he needed to cheer up his little sister somehow (he refused to leave her that upset, and the truth of Hueco Mundo had done nothing to lift her mood); he also needed to thank Inoue.

She had saved his life, literally.

Jogging along the road as was her daily routine, Tatsuki was amazed to spot Ichigo in the distance. He was wearing a black kimono and seemed preoccupied. As they drew closer she waved at him cheerfully.

"Yo, Ichigo!"

The guy blinked and focused on her, returning the wave and smile after a beat of blankness. "Yo."

They passed each other and continued on their merry ways, until she heard Ichigo skid to a halt some distance behind her and shout "WAIT, what the _fuck?!_"

Sniggering to herself at his delayed reaction, the girl left her best friend to figure out how she could see him when he was an invisible death god on his own.

**o)0(o**

The wooden door of the Urahara Shouten scraped open, and a distinctly hung-over proprietor glared at him fuzzily through the fabric of the green-and-white striped hat that had fallen over his eyes. "Good morning valued customer!" he trilled, contriving to make it sound like 'burn and die'. "We're not open yet, please come back in a week or so." He pushed the rim up clumsily.

His jaw dropped.

Ichigo grinned sheepishly. "Is Kon here?"

Looking distinctly uneasy, Urahara Kisuke leaned against the door and shook his head slowly. "Finally, a thing I haven't seen before. The power of that girl is horrifying."

"You think?" Ichigo scratched his ginger hair, squinting up at the cold blue morning. "I was pretty pleased about it, myself."

"Life after death is nothing surprising, but life after dying as a death god? You should have taken on a new being after what you went through. There was nothing left of you." Privately, he was rather miffed that unimaginable cosmic power rested in the hairpins of a girl still in school, rather than being something of his genius design as per usual.

The teenager shrugged. "I'd rather not think about that, it was kinda agonisingly painful. And I haven't spoken to Inoue yet, she's dead asleep. Couldn't wake her up. You'll have to ask her about how she did it." He paused, remembering something. To voice it felt strange – like pouring his heart out to a stranger – yet if there was a chance to understand then he wanted to know.

"After I died…" he began hesitantly.

"_After_?!"

He gave up. "Does 'Heavenly Chains' mean anything to you?"

Urahara rubbed his stubble chin in thought, stepping away from the door to allow his necromanced protégé access. "If it relates to the Chain of Fate, then yes. But trust me, Kurosaki-kun, you're not enough of a philosopher or scientist to understand my explanation. Might as well forget about it!" he chirped.

Ichigo gave him a filthy glare and entered the shop, door clacking shut behind him.

"I heard about Karin-chan," said the man in a low, sombre voice. "Ururu has been in tears ever since finding out."

"Were they good friends?" asked Ichigo, surprised. He'd been away from home too much, too long. He'd missed everything. The boy seemed to bow slightly under the weight of his regrets, but quickly remembered the decision he'd made after seeing his little sister cry, and straightened. They'd reached the back rooms now.

Surrounded by about fifty bottles of sake; Yoruichi, Tessai, Shinji, Cloud the mod-soul and for some inexplicable reason Don Kanonji were all collapsed round the dining table in a drunken heap of mourning. Most of them were snoring. It certainly took the phrase 'strange bedfellows' to a whole new level.

"Hey look," slurred Shinji, his slack-jawed state not really suiting his extremely obvious teeth. He punched the spirits-sodden psychic beside him weakly. "Look. It's Boy!"

Yoruichi Shihouin twitched suddenly. He'd never seen her so graceless. "Boy is dead! And little Karin-chan! What would his mother say?" the dark-skinned woman wailed. "Poor Ish-!"

Urahara quickly gagged her before she let slip that they were on first name terms with Ichigo's father. Shinji continued his inebriated tirade.

"The ghost of Boy! Look, 'Nonji, you idiot…it's your spirit guide extraordinaire!" He sat back and raised a wobbling eyebrow. "Honestly, Ichigo, you sell-out. Messing around with mediums, what are you…a hundred and twelve?"

The boy who had come back from the dead felt a nervous sweat drop roll down his temple. "Please don't wake that guy up…he's really annoying…"

Then he felt something clamp onto his back. "Ichigo…" murmured the squeaky growl of the truly most irritating being in existence. "You'd better have brought my beautiful Goddess of the Valley back with you… Or I shall run away with your body, and leap off a bridge in my despair…"

One eye twitching, Ichigo decided the later pain would be worth it and punched Kon in the skull. "You know when you jump on me like that it pisses me off, but when you do it in _my body_ it's just _disturbing_."

Kon reeled, birds and stars spinning round his head. Yoruichi looked up and groaned.

"I see dead strawberries…two of them…oh Spirit King I have double-vision…" She rubbed her head with an orange sleeve. "Kiss-Kiss, why did you let me drink twenty bottles of that corner shop crap?"

Opening his mouth to reply, Kisuke paused when he heard the telltale sounds of snickering from all the men in the room who weren't unconscious.

"She calls you Kiss-Kiss?" repeated Ichigo in amazed joy, unable to keep a straight face.

"Did you want something?" asked Urahara abruptly, less than pleased. "I expect you want to visit Soul Society, ne, Kurosaki-_kun_. I'll open the senkai gate for you directly." Turning huffily, he stalked towards the basement trapdoor, leaving an atmosphere of affronted spite in his wake.

Before following, the boy pointed at his physical body with a murderous glare. "You have until I get back to make sure my body is _exactly_ the way I left it, or I'm flushing your green pill down the toilet."

The mod soul scoffed. "You wouldn't dare. I'm doing you a favour here! And I can do what I like in return!"

Ichigo somehow managed to loom dangerously over someone his exact same height. "It's that or I glue you to Yuzu's sewing table."

Kon paled.

"Yeah," grinned the shinigami. "I didn't think so."

**o)0(o**

"You've got a bloody nerve, Kuchiki Rukia! I may have forgiven you, but I never said I liked you." Shiba Kuukaku was wearing her usual expression of relaxed cynicism, and one could never tell whether she was serious in her hatred or simply joking. Every word that fell from her lips was a test, measuring your ability to judge her real opinion. "I wonder what you're doing, strutting around my front yard in shinigami robes. Perhaps someone has a death wish." Behind her, Ganju nodded vigorously in agreement, arms crossed and legs akimbo.

Well, it was no secret that when it came to reading Kuukaku's foul temper, her brother was the absolute worst. So Rukia smiled, marvelling at how readily it appeared on her lips.

Her fellow doghouse noble rewarded her with a grin. They had plenty in common, after all. Unwanted nobility…bellicose personalities…and the thorn of Kaien's death in their sides.

The smoking, cleavage, and lack of taste, however, were total opposites.

(Their house was currently a gothic castle, and the hands that held the banner were throwing giant thumbs-ups to the fields around. The banner itself had some kind of esoteric kido written across it that Rukia couldn't identify. 'Shiba Posse FTW, ROFLCOPTOR!'? No. It was a mystery.)

"I have avenged Kaien-dono!" exclaimed the shinigami, unable to hold it in any longer.

The siblings blinked at her. Kuukaku reached out, grabbed her head, and dragged her forward. "_What?_"

"T-The Hollow Metastacia that possessed him…was eaten by Aaroniero, Aizen's Ninth Espada…" explained the short woman intermittently as she struggled to get away. "All of his memories and form and even zanpakuto were still inside the arrancar; he tried to use Kaien's body to trick and kill me. But I finally managed to kill him-"

Released, she staggered backwards. "And now the remnants of Kaien-dono's soul are free!"

"Oooh, so you beat an Espada, did you?" cooed the Head of the Shiba Clan as Ganju gaped soundlessly at the nemesis he'd once rescued. "Not bad, not bad. Well done. In fact…"

She tripped up Ganju so that he was in a kowtow position, stamping on his back when he tried to escape. Pointing her pipe at Rukia, Kuukaku stood regally tall.

"We the Shiba Clan do hereby offer our deepest gratitude and friendship to Rukia of the still-Noble Kuchiki family, in thanks for her merciful release of him in his darkest hour; her vengeance of his death; and her restoration of his honour." She flicked the ash out of her pipe. "They have machines that can follow the location of a soul in Twelfth Squad. He really was still in there; they'd been tracking him through Hueco Mundo for years." There was a beat of sorrow in her voice, sadness flashed over her face. "Apparently that was presence enough to count as a betrayal."

Rukia was shocked, and it showed. The story most had heard was that the remaining Shiba Clan members had renounced Yamamoto and withdrawn.

"I heard he said the same thing about Ichigo just because you didn't bring back a corpse."

The soul reaper looked away. "The Soutaicho is still replacing Central 46 after the massacre. He has to question everything and remain absolutely strict in his judgement."

"Sucks though."

"Of course it does!" She agreed with a scathing laugh. "He just wants to execute everyone! But only a fool would blindly trust ryoka that appeared during a conspiracy, so what does that make us? …Ichigo's proven himself countless times, even if he is too much of a free agent." Subdued. "The truth remains that if he'd obeyed Soutaicho-sama he would have lived. It was Kaien all over again. Death by the blade of someone trusted…"

"Must come with the face," mused Kuukaku, staring into the distance with the hint of a smile.

"You noticed that too?!"

"Sure. Hey, do me a favour would you? You go to that Yama-jii, Rukia-chan, and you tell him that the Shibas are coming out of hiding. Someone needs to blow Aizen's ass up. It all goes back to him, even Kaien. So as you've avenged him, I declare our mourning over and our ass-kicking back in business!"

"O-Okay," stuttered the Kuchiki, amazed by the older woman's brazen attitude towards banishment. So now it was _mourning_? Turning to leave, she walked straight into a tall, broad chest and rebounded. "Oi! Watch where you're going!"

"Wari, wari…" said a familiar voice, less than apologetic. "You're so short I didn't see you there."

She stopped dead, and looked up.

There was silence as recognition hit her like a runaway train.

"ICHIGO!"

Suddenly Rukia was either hugging or strangling him; it was hard to tell with someone who had to jump to reach his neck.

"You were dead! Karin carved you up like a kebab! What are you doing here? Why did you sneak up on me like that? You're – here! HOW?!"

Ichigo shrugged. "I noticed, yes and it hurt, searching for you, for shits and giggles, uh huh; Inoue." He grinned widely. "Do I have to draw a picture?"

She smacked his arm. "Don't copy my idiosyncrasy!"

"Ow! …Ganju, what are you doing down there?" asked Ichigo, only just spotting him.

Kuukaku glanced down to find her foot still crushing her younger brother into the dirt.

"Oops."

**o)0(o**

Inoue woke up as daylight caressed her face for the first time in many lonely and shadowed days.

Ichigo is alive. I am home. In this place of safety she could finally relax.

No, wait. He had gone. The bed was empty.

His resurrection – had she dreamed that?

As she teetered on the brink of the mental breakdown, Ichigo popped his head round the bedroom door.

"Morning Inoue. Do you like donuts?"

Ichigo. Donuts. Dream scenario. A concept of _such bliss_ after such harrowing times, it overwhelmed her.

"Yes!" squeaked Orihime, and fainted.

**o)0(o**

_Welcome to Hell Butterfly, Arc Two: Karakura!_

_Alliriyan~*_


	16. Donut Day

**Hell Butterfly**

**Donut Day**

**~16~**

**o)0(o**

"We're going to have a fun day, okay Yuzu?" said Ichigo, looking up at the young girl sitting on his shoulders. She was fidgeting with his bright ginger hair and swinging her heels against his chest, subdued and lonely. There'd been no fight over which twin had to piggyback with their eccentric dad rather than their relatively normal brother. No one to glance across to and giggle with from their high perches.

He was holding her legs to steady her balance, and patted them softly to draw her attention. "If you keep this up, Karin will feel like she ruined your life."

Yuzu looked away, towards the Karakura high street. "You told me she'd forgotten us."

"Yeah…" he dragged the word out awkwardly; "but she might remember one day. That's the whole point of my job, I told you. 'Saving lost souls' stuff. It just happens to include stabbing them."

"But Karin-chan is stronger than you."

Ichigo was silent for a moment, and then spoke as if he had never hesitated. "I will get stronger."

"Just like that?"

"Sure, I do it all the time;" he shrugged. Yuzu nearly pulled his hair out trying not to fall off as her seat shifted. "Nii-chan, it's Karin that plays buckaroo, not me! Mou!"

"You sure about that?!" He began to sway from side to side, making her squeal loud in his ear.

"Where did you find your body?" asked his sister suddenly, having caught on to the concept of gikon and gigai worryingly fast.

The teenager swivelled round to look at Inoue and her own cargo. "Oh, Kon was taking care of it at the Urahara Shouten. By the way, Inoue, sorry you have to carry him – he refused to give my body back unharmed unless you did." And seeing yourself hold a kitchen knife to your own throat is disturbing, to say the least.

"It's no problem," replied the girl sweetly, glancing down at the lion plushie she'd been hugging so absent-mindedly. Her expression changed and she flung it away, holding the toy out at arm's length by its foot. "Haaaah!"

The lecherous lion stretched its cotton paws towards her beseechingly, which looked less inviting upside down. "Hime of the Valley!" he crooned.

_What would Tatsuki do in this situation?! Ah yes._

Orihime dropkicked the mod soul halfway down the street. Two dozen metres away he struck the swinging signboard that advertised the donut shop and rebounded into its open door. "SCORE!" she roared, punching the air, and had already forgotten that her intent had been to punish, not bag a goal.

"Karakura King just flew into the donut shop!" gasped Yuzu, pointing excitedly. She hadn't noticed what was happening behind her. Her steed blinked.

"Nah, that was Kon. The faux soul I told you about? You call him Bostov and think he's a girl, and stuff him into frilly dresses whenever my back's turned?" In fact there was a long litany of grievances the lion had drilled into his owner with night after night of complaints, but Ichigo couldn't be bothered to repeat it.

"Bostov's a man?! For real?!" Once again Yuzu was crestfallen. Karin had been right after all. Ichigo heard the tone of her voice and thought fast. He was determined to make her happy today; he had decided that last night when seeing her depression had broken his heart.

"Um, he's a toy, right? No gender! You should just alternate costumes for him. But no dresses when he's in my body. I mean it. Never."

"Ohhh!" cried Yuzu, delighted, and hugged his head. "Good idea, Nii-chan!"

**o)0(o**

The attack began the instant they entered the donut shop. Homing missile #1 (a.k.a. Keigo) was dispatched with a swift right hook to the jaw. Missile #2, Chizuru, was adeptly deflected and sent spinning out the door without physical harm, as per Rule 3b: Do Not Hit Girls, Even Really Annoying Clingy Ones. The third volley, Tatsuki, was deemed safe and granted passage to throw herself at Inoue in a fervent embrace. Once she was reassured that her best friend was alive and well, she turned to Ichigo and gave him a hug as well.

"You're still my best friend too, you know…" she said firmly, punching him lightly. "And, uh, sorry about your head."

"What about his head?" asked Orihime, mystified. Tatsuki laughed and looked sheepish. "When you vanished, he refused to tell me where you'd gone; so I sort of smashed his head straight through a window."

"Trust me, I've had worse," grumbled the tall teenager. He rubbed his orange hair in memory, that hit he'd given Kon was still smarting hours later.

Inoue's eyes grew huge and round; and she clasped onto Tatsuki's arm in her intensity. "Yeah, Kurosaki-kun _died_!"

Choking on thin air, Ichigo was extremely grateful when Keigo chose that moment to come charging past them with Yuzu. "I can't believe it!" he cried. "Your little sister is _the_ Karakura Yellow from _the_ Don Kanonji's new show! So luckyyyy~!"

"Is she?" stuttered her brother, caught completely off-guard by the news. It didn't help when Tatsuki tapped on his arm and pointed at the counter, either. "Look out, Orihime-chan is ordering. I have to warn you, Ichigo, she's always had this lifetime dream of going into a donut shop and ordering one of –"

"I want everything, please!" trilled Orihime, the sheer joy and triumph literally oozing out of her ecstatic voice. Ambition number one, success!

The poor sucker who had naively volunteered to pay nearly died for the second time right there and then. (Or was it third?)

"Do we really need that many?" asked Tatsuki hesitantly, as the till assistant stared in shock at all the rows of sweet deep-fried confectionary he'd have to package.

"But Kurosaki-kun invited _everyone_, Tatsuki-chan!"

Kurosaki-kun staggered towards the plastic table his friends were sat at and plonked himself down heavily. He managed to greet Chad with a high-five and Ishida with a curt nod before hiding his face in horror at the inevitable bill.

"So," said Mizuiro off-hand, typing away on his mobile phone. "You gonna explain this soul reaping gig to us now?"

**o)0(o**

"It's bigger than me…!" gasped Lily, wearing the iced donut like a swimming ring to match her blue costume. All of the Shun Shun Rikka seemed equally delighted with their thank you gifts. Inoue, on the other hand, was suddenly jealous.

"I wish I could have a donut that big," she sighed, earning a sympathetic (or perhaps just opportunistic) hug from Chizuru. "I'm sure you can make up for it in numbers," replied Ichigo. He had to smile, though. There was no real way to pay her back for something so infinitely priceless as undoing his death. Donuts and a day out with all their friends would have to do. _I guess that's priceless too, technically…_

Speaking of friends, some uninvited had piled into the shop and started kicking up a fuss. Not out of any hatred; simply because bickering came more naturally than breathing to the vaizards. They had arranged themselves in another corner after the usual greetings – a kick into the wall grace of Hiyori, a generous handful of friendly insults from Shinji and a variety box of waves and punches from the rest.

With them had come all the crew from the Urahara shop. Sure, it was nice that Yuzu had friends in Ururu and Jinta, but watching Mashiro and Ririn try to pass themselves off as twelve-year-olds was…yeah. Urahara, Tessai and Yoruichi were inventing hangover cures that could outdo Inoue's cooking, and the presence of Don Kanonji had resulted in a near-continuous wave of hysterical evil laughter.

"BWAHAHAHAHAAA!" roared the semi-charlatan, his crossed arms shaking. "Smells like-!"

He spotted the shop assistant staring at him, transfixed by the real-life presence of his TV hero.

"- Gureito Donatsu!!!!!!" _Fanservice. It never hurt the ratings._

**o)0(o**

"Hey! Hey! Football-kun! Remember us?"

Toushiro turned and beheld a tiny gang of kids. They seemed oddly familiar.

"…Kurosaki Karin's friends?"

Their faces, so small, young and regrettably similar to his own, seemed to crumple at the reminder. "Ah, yeah…" said the current ringleader sadly. "She, she kinda isn't around anymore."

Feigning ignorance as if he didn't have the inside Death God scoop on the girl's whereabouts in Hueco Mundo, Toushiro raised an eyebrow.

"She died a week ago of an annoying-ism…" The boy was punched, and his friend hissed "_aneurysm!"_

"I don't know what that is!"

"It's really gross; it means your brain spontaneously explodes…" To one side, their quieter friend was looking faintly green.

"Well I'm going in here now." Hitsugaya indicated the food outlet. "Kurosaki's siblings will be there – maybe you could talk to them." _And stop talking to me as if we're the same age!_

With the Tenth Captain were Rukia and Renji. The short, dark-haired woman went straight to Ichigo and stood arms akimbo, looking at him with pity. "I know you're in a state right now."

"I'm not in a state."

"You've suffered a great deal of damage, betrayal and loss in a very short time…"

"I got better."

"But remember we're right behind you and the faster you recover the sooner you can help us defeat Aizen and avenge Karin-chan."

"I'm aware of that, yes."

She stared in amazement. "You're absolutely certain you don't want me to beat some sense into you?"

"I'd like to see you try, dumbass!"

"_Ooohh, you're in for it now, Mr My-Shikai-Is-Overcompensating!_" Though where that left Renji, when Zabimaru's shikai form could extend several metres, was anyone's guess.

"At least I have bankai, Miss I-Have-No-Rank-Because-My-Brother's-A-Pansy!"

"Oh yes." His mentor's reply was arch. "Your pathetically tiny bankai. Don't worry, Titchigo, maybe when you've trained for twenty years like all the _other_ captains we'll actually be able to _see_ it."

"You look a little grim, Hitsugaya-san," noted Ishida, pointedly ignoring the raging food fight that had struck up between Rukia and Ichigo, and which was now slowly engulfing every person in the shop.

Toushiro tried to eat a sticky jam donut without looking his physical age. It was a futile attempt. "Matsumoto's been avoiding all the paperwork and leaving me to do the work of at least three divisions alone." He hid a delicate shudder, just the thought of all that writing made his wrist cramp. "She spends half the time drunk and depressed about something, so I haven't demoted her from benefit of the doubt. – Oh no, looks like she's alright…"

"The nature of monkey is irrepressible, chibi-taicho!" Matsumoto flung herself at him, crushing him underneath the weight of her embrace. The boy grated out a complaint as the air temperature dropped several degrees. "You are not a monkey, Matsumoto." _But you are drunk._

"What do you think I am then, a cat? Mrowr!" Decades of partnership with Haineko had perfected her cat impression. She ruffled her superior's hair, his back caving under her heavy pressure. "What about you, you never grow! Are you Peter Pan or something?" Although her words were light-hearted, she was reminded of another as she stroked the albino tufts between her fingers. When she next spoke, the levity had fallen from her tone without realising.

"Poor little lost boy…"

_Lost among the hollow-hearted and their cold unsmiling masks._

"Matsu…moto…I'm…choking…"

**o)0(o**

"I can't go in _there_!" gasped Yumichika. "It's so ugly and plastic and _modernist_!"

"Yeah," snorted Ikkaku, walking in regardless; "like the Eleventh Barracks are any prettier."

His partner in crime shrank in on himself, they'd entered the building and now garish interior decorating surrounded him on all sides. "_It's cramping my style_," hissed the man in a panic.

The Third Seat officer had to stop and stare at him incredulously then. "Your style." Ikkaku repeated the words blankly. "Yumichika, you wear some weird orange woolly jumper, glue feathers to your face and have purple hair. You _do realise_ that the only other person ever to mimic your 'style' was Tousen, _THE BLIND GUY_, right?"

Deeply wounded, for the truth hurts, the fashionista began to sulk. "The feathers are a manifestation of my zanpakuto, _actually_."

"Bullshit."

"It's true! Just like Renji's tattoos!"

"Oh, are they Zabimaru's fault? Should've known anyone who dropped out of Eleventh wouldn't have the balls to go under the needle."

"Oi," snapped Renji, looming behind him. "Who's the lieutenant here, Mr Moon?" When the bald man opened his mouth to fight back, the fukutaicho gagged him with a donut. "At least I'm not scared of measly paperwork like the rest of you."

Covered by now in delicious crumbs of shrapnel, Ichigo paused long enough in his donut war to realise that the mix of people in the room was actually very volatile. Captains, humans, outcasts, mod souls, fairies, shinigamis, vaizards…if they invited Nel, Karin and a few Gillian along it would be a perfect collection. But in the corners of the rooms things were beginning to grow tense.

"Lisa, please don't read yuri magazines when Ichigo's little sister is here," murmured Love quietly.

"Let-Go-Of-Orihime-You-Raving-Lesbian!" shouted Tatsuki, beating Chizuru away from her naïve best friend.

Neither girl paid attention to the advice, for their eyes had locked together and the crowded room of the donut shop had fallen away…

As one, they raised a hand and adjusted their glasses. The lenses flashed spookily, sending secret telegraph messages via the play of light.

"Yadomaru Lisa," said the vaizard.

"Chizuru," replied the human teenager.

Psychic communication made them move towards the door in tandem. All others leapt out of their path, fearing for their lives. Until at the door itself, a latecomer had the audacity to walk straight into them.

"Ah – sorry!" said Hisagi Shuuhei quickly. Both women scowled at him for a moment until their faces broke into matching evil grins.

"Shuuhei," purred Lisa, recalling his name from somewhere although he was after her time. "Did no one ever tell you…"

"What sixty-nine stands for?" finished Chizuru, sweeping past him with a flick of her red hair.

He stood very still as the pair vanished into the distance, feeling a powerful hunch that he'd just survived something terribly dangerous.

**o)0(o**

"HAP-PY BIRTHDAY, ICHIGOOOOOOOO!" A grown man launched himself into the shop and tackled the redhead to the ground. Apparently it was a hug. One so tight it was almost like the father knew his son had died – even though Ichigo had tried to convince him it was Inoue's mistake. And a load of excuses about gangs and kidnappings and sumo wrestlers wanting grudge matches. Lying wasn't the girl's strong point.

"What?!"

"It was two days ago!" sobbed his father; performing yet another perfect rendition of bipolar maniac on speed. "Your sixteenth birthday, and you didn't even call home!"

"I…er…there was no reception?"

Yuzu poked him in the ribs, in the one spot that she knew always made him jump three feet in the air.

"GAH!"

"Tell him!"

He cringed; then sighed. "Do I have to? You know he's going to be annoying about it."

"..and you didn't invite me to your birthday donut party! Even though I'll have to pay for it!" Ichigo suddenly brightened up and appeared glad to see his father. Perhaps he wouldn't be in debt for the next ten years after all!

"Right, yeah," said the birthday boy, shoving his oyaji off with a smile. "Sixteen huh? Thanks for the party!" It barely sounded true. So many life and death battles had torn him up since meeting Rukia that he had stopped seeing himself as a child or teenager long ago. Perhaps the fights had always been his bad habit, but the recent severity was insane.

"You don't want me here do you," moped Isshin, drooping his arms and back. Until he spotted Urahara from the corner of his eye. Right on cue the mad scientist danced forwards, in full innocent-shopkeeper mode.

"Oh my," sang Kisuke, grinning madly; "you must be Kurosaki-kun's father! It's a pleasure to meet you for the _first time_! Your boy's been a great help down at the shop!"

Was that Rangiku-chan wobbling around behind the man's green striped hat? And little Toushiro beside her?! "You know I really think we should go for a chat at a bar," declared Isshin, winking frantically. "They don't want us old fogeys around, right?" He grasped Matsumoto's arm when she tottered past, and Urahara did the same with Yoruichi. "Have fun, Ichigooo~! Tell them I'll pay the tab later!"

As rapidly as his arrival, all four fled the donut shop.

Outside, the two men burst out laughing. "Oyaa, that was dangerous," gasped Urahara. "I couldn't keep a straight face!"

"It's fine, it's fine! I trained my kids to be oblivious to weird behaviour so that they'd never catch me out!"

"That explains a lot!"

"Doesn't it just!"

**o)0(o**

Closing time seemed to come all too soon, and just like that the day of pretending everything was fine was over. But as long as Yuzu kept smiling and laughing, Ichigo could almost believe they would be okay. That the aching in his heart to see his other little sister so happy was not there.

With much cheering and a few photos, the diverse groups went their separate ways. It was funny to think that the sole thing they all had in common was the Kurosaki family, incomplete as it was.

When everyone else had left, the adults returned to settle accounts. Urahara was still under the punishment of paying for everything, leaving Isshin relaxed as terrifying amounts of paper were chewed out by the cash register. Even thirty-odd people can't out-eat a restaurant, so it was extremely convenient when a tiny pink-haired shinigami arrived to kidnap the rest of the donuts. If slightly uncanny.

Rangiku was still with them, having found a great drinking partner in Ichigo's father. The man acted like he'd known her for years and had been a fantastic piece of entertainment. He was even capable of shooing away the dark, gloomy cloud around her heart. It had been growing steadily as a tumour ever since Gin had abandoned her.

"We should…we should have a like an affair or something…" slurred Matsumoto, swaying drunkenly towards Isshin. "Sure, why not," he replied with a wide, wry grin. "It's only taken you forty years to get over the last one."

"H-hey! I never met you before in my – in my loofah! – My life!"

"I know you don't remember, Ran-chan, so don't think about it anymore, okay?" His voice was odd, a sad flavour tainting the habitual cheer.

"Aww, cheer up," cried Matsumoto, patting his face blindly. "I'll go partying with you next time I'm in this dimenenension, alright?"

"I promise," laughed Isshin. He watched her vanish back to Seireitei with Yoruichi's shoulder as support, before helping Urahara piggyback the empty gigai used that day down to his basement.

Then he went home and sat at the kitchen table for a long time, staring at Masaki's poster; thinking of the past. Listening to the muffled tears of his children and guest filter through the thin walls of the house, he wished their day of blissful ignorance could have lasted a little longer.

He wished everything had.

**o)0(o**

**Bloomake!**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

Rukia and modern art – "The speed of the drawings mirror the rat race of modern life, the cheap materials reflecting how our values have degenerated, and the animalistic themes prove the underlying savagery of humanity as shown by the potential all have to become Hollow. It's a nihilistic masterpiece! And your kids will love it!"

"It's a misshapen bunny drawn in felt tip."

"THAT'S THE GENIUS!"

**o)0(o**

**Chapter notes: **_Ack. That took two weeks to write! Dealing with thirty+ different characters at once is freaking hard! Hope everyone enjoys, and the next update should be faster. = )_


	17. Shifting Silver

**Hell Butterfly**

**Shifting Silver**

**~17~**

**o)0(o**

Aizen watched the latest arrancar collapse sideways, crumbling into thick dust. The girl had reverted the Hougyoku to a stage of dormancy beyond even that when he had first taken it. Even if it still existed, and still could grow back into its former power, he had as good as lost it.

At its core, the Hougyoku was a catalyst for fusion. Designed for drawing the different faces of the soul closer together and merging their disparate powers. But every new soldier he created just disintegrated into grey sand. The fusion was gone.

The Hougyoku was useless.

Aizen hissed out a breath of air in a rare display of emotion. Leaning his hands on the glass cube in which the new arrancar had failed to be born, he hung his head for a moment, agile mind whirling. The Hougyoku had failed him. He had underestimated his captives. Rather, he had estimated their powers with perfect accuracy as ever, but not the girl's daring. His arrogant display of gathering his army in a single area and leaving his palace unguarded had cost him dear; he would not hesitate to admit that. Hesitation was fatal. And now that his key tool had been ruined; learning from his mistakes would be vital.

Yes, with ten Vasto Lordes his army would have been perfect, and the ransacking of Soul Society a simple matter. But one could never doubt how truly rare such creatures were. Discounting Tenebra Shirojos, whose brief and violent passage into his elite had left her a limbo being difficult to decipher; he had only three Vasto Lordes at his disposal. And Ulquiorra Schiffer, who had been in transition to become one at the time of their first meeting.

_That was not enough._ And they were not powerful enough, his Espada. Aaroniero had died pitifully easily at the hands of an unranked street rat noble. Nnoitra had been pulverised by a woman he knew full well the strengths and weaknesses of, in his foolish ignoring of her Fraccion.

Walking into the council of war hall with a sharpness to his step that whispered of his rising anger, Aizen glared at his followers and poured a look of disdain upon them such as they had never before seen from him.

"You were all nothing more than stepping stones," he declared coldly. At the far end of the long table Tenebra twitched at the malice in his words. Hallibel pressed a calming hand against the hollow child's head, warding off a stronger reaction. To draw out the fear and strength of this soldier could be damaging to them all.

"To have such an army that contains none who can match me? I may as well defeat Yamamoto Genryuusai's Gotei and the Spirit King's Zero Division on my own. Not one of you is sufficient for my purposes."

Certain arrancars were bridling now, in particular Grimmjaw, Barragan and Yammy were hissing insults at the wound to their egos. But Aizen, capable of defeating them all in a single instant, would never be moved by mere ire.

"However, the eleven of you are now all I can work from. With Wonderweiss Margera and Neliel Tu Oderschvank as replacement Nuevo and Quinta; I have a grand total of six idiots and five deluded geniuses to spearhead my attack against god."

To one side, Ichimaru whistled quietly in admiration. That was a rather damning analysis of the scourges of Hueco Mundo. Tousen set his lip in a thin line. He found all this posturing useless, and was only interested in the results of Aizen's realisations.

Ulquiorra, Hallibel and Zommari sat bolt upright, as ever. Each of them had a high level of self-awareness, and had known for a long time that they did not compare to their leader's ambitions. This outburst came as no surprise.

Sousuke afforded his inferiors no chance to speak. The days of 'dear Espada' were over. Henceforth they would have to _earn_ his good favour, instead of lazing about his hallways waiting for power to befall them on a silver platter. His eyes were thinned and steady, his posture relaxed and foreseeing no argument as he laid out the new order of things.

"Half of the soul reaper captains are both older and wiser than all of you, my fledgling arrancars. You are a new breed facing battle against veterans who mastered the killing of your kind long ago. At your current strength you will be cut down like chaff, nothing more than a distraction instead of the support I would prefer."

None of the monsters were pleased to hear this, and the displeasure was easily read on their human faces. But before them was a man they had sworn loyalty to, a man who could control them with less than a look. A turncoat shinigami who had promised them something more than an eternity of mouldering away in Hueco Mundo.

"All I ask is that you return to your roots. Today we shall lay waste to the hunting grounds beneath the desert, and build your abilities in the most effective method remaining to us. Gorge upon the weak and feeble Hollows until sheer weight of numbers does the work of a few seconds with the Hougyoku. You have the Privaron Needle Prisonn to thank for its deterioration."

He paused for a moment, smiling slightly at his Primera Espada Starrk as the arrancar yawned at the thought of such manual labour. Starrk was his strongest disciple after the Cero and Zero, and certainly the most capable. But until he could deflect such tricks as Kyoraku's games or Soi Fon's two hit kill, he was incomplete.

"I have only a single pact with you." He addressed everyone in the room, his fellow traitors, his hand-built army, even himself. "Exceed your limits; otherwise it shall be my hand that ends you."

**o)0(o**

Nel was sitting on the table, her child form too small to see over its edge when she sat on her chair. Once Aizen had exited stage left, she turned to Grimmjaw Jeagerjacques who had had the bad luck to be sat next to her, and asked the one question that would most likely get her killed.

"This ish all pointless, izzn't it?"

Grimmjaw leaned away from her in an unsubtle manner. "What do you want, Neliel?"

"I just think...why do we all bovver to survive in dis dump?"

"You ask that at the one time when change is on the horizon?" asked Zommari incredulously. He glanced at his fellow Espada. "A year from now we may be back in the real world." He said nothing of ruling it. The memory of its colour and vitality spoke for itself, the sole hope that Hollows and arrancars would never voice.

"But really...there's eleven of us," she looked questioningly at the zombiefied remnants of Karin; "and about seven billion humans, right? Really, I don't think the odds quite match up." There was a loud implosion of smoke as her adult form returned, as it had sporadically ever since her battle against Nnoitra.

"That head-wound clearly damaged you, Oderschvank," rumbled the self-styled King of Hueco Mundo. "We fight and feed off the carnage because that is our sole desire. To consume. To fill the insatiable voids within us."

"Insatiable." She repeated the word loudly. "As in, pointless to even attempt to satisfy that hunger. Why do we bother? We're not mindless Hollows anymore. And neither are we weak. I for one am not at the beck and call of my cravings."

Szayel dragged the woman up from her chair, spinning her round by the arm. "Easy to say for one who lacks a hole through her body. Perhaps Aizen made some mistakes when he created you."

She brushed him off, and pointed at Hallibel in childish accusation. "Neither does Tia!"

The female Espada pulled her zanpakuto halfway from its sheath, wordlessly indicating the coreless blade as the manifestation of her hollow. Nel humphed and crossed her arms.

"All I'm saying is we don't need to follow Aizen-sama around like starving dogs anymore. He no longer has the Hougyoku. He is no longer different to any other shinigami. And clearly he would never become an arrancar or vaizard himself, seeing as we're all _so_ beneath him. In spite of all our broken masks and human faces, have we progressed no further than Gillian?!"

Several of her colleagues looked mystified. For some it had been so many decades since they were at that lower level of evolution that they could not even remember the behaviours of those giants.

"They gather in herds and can be controlled by anyone stronger?" Nel reminded them, pulling a face. Unlike herself, the other Espada had all spent so much time holed up in this castle they had forgotten the Forest of Menos lay below their feet.

"They eat madly to fill the emptiness within, they conform for a shadow of friendship, they obey in search of purpose. Shit," spat Grimmjaw; "I hated being a Gillian, being so stupid and merged to other losers and obeying idiot adjuchas. But breaking out of the Gillian state was like going beyond the despair and madness. You're mad to say we're anything like those worthless drones."

"Nevertheless, the survival instinct will only carry us so far. What will we do next year, when we've conquered everything in existence?"

Laughter broke the tension clouding the air. Starrk was sprawled across the table, half-asleep and grinning lazily. "Next year there'll be one of us left, and that one will be lonely. Don't be naive, 'dear Espada'. When he's finished playing god, Aizen will exterminate us all. There's nothing out there in that desert, and the real world is full of nothing but distractions from the very same fact. We might as well bare our throats and thank him for the favour." Of course, Lilynette would object, but she wasn't quite so laissez-faire as he.

The hall fell deeply into silence. At length Grimmjaw smashed his fist into the white stone table and stood up abruptly.

"I've lasted this long. Pessimism's never gonna catch me out now. Every Hollow we eat today will just be another in a long line of reasons why we're better at surviving. Why be ashamed of it, Neliel? Did Ichigo turn ya soft?"

He stalked out of the chamber raring for bloodshed.

"_I_ won't be killed by nothingness."

**o)0(o**

"What are we gonna do with this retard?" scoffed Grimmjaw, prodding the girl's head. It bobbed like a nodding toy, entirely without reaction. "You ripped up my new toy, Shirojos, aren'tcha gonna wake up and say sorry? I wanted to kill Ichigo myself…" Turning away when the Tercera began to get pissed off by his treatment of her charge and look at him dangerously; Jeagerjacques spat at the sand. Prowling around the edges of their group, he was impatient for the hunt to begin. But first they had to solve the little problem of making Aizen's key soldier train as well.

Yammy, still angry at the ryoka's little sister for usurping his position as Cero Espada, growled out a complaint. "How're we meant to make the brat eat? We stuck an adjuchas right in front of her and the bitch ignored it!"

"It doesn't help that its Cero blast bounced straight off her skin," murmured Hallibel, studying the monotone child through blonde eyelashes. "Barragan-sama should have given the placement of his Dark Konsou a little more thought."

The former king of Las Noches ignored the jibe. "Scare the Zero a little, Starrk." He tossed an order at the Primera without regard for his greater rank. "My own reiatsu would only age her to dust."

Coyote Starrk blinked at his companions. Lilynette was perched on his shoulders, yet he managed to give the impression that she remained there because he just couldn't be bothered to push the Fraccion off. "Can I do it later?" asked the man apathetically. "I want to get this 'work' over with…"

A soft footstep made them all turn. The silvery Ichimaru Gin had appeared behind them, he who was an enigmatic grey area and a threat as fleeting as a cloud. "Nothin' ta worry about," he smiled. "I kin make her bite."

"_You?_" said Szayel incredulously, clearly lacking the usual data on this shinigami. "You're not even a vaizard or arrancar – how can _you_ hope to affect her?"

"Oho," grinned the unsettling man. "I'm a taicho jus' like Aizen, remember? I'll use my bankai."

**o)0(o**

Gin's recruitment to Aizen's cause had happened earlier than most realised.

During an Academy training exercise, Sousuke had let one of his pet projects loose to terrorise the new recruits. It had been extremely effective, wiping out several Seated officers alongside the helpless students.

A multiplying Hollow of vast power. No one had survived more than ten seconds against it from the first move. And it had enjoyed bragging about this with every subsequent victim, growling out the countdown as they were instantly surrounded and crushed.

The Fifth Division Captain had been approaching, finally ordered to deal with the threat that had devastated their ranks. It would be brushed under the carpet by Yamamoto's little pen-pushers later, naturally, but for now Aizen would enjoy his secret handiwork first hand. Though he planned to create much, much worse than this in the future.

The dense maze of buildings thinned to open ground, and now he could see the vast mass of the Hollow. Its clones were swarming everywhere, and there was a dot of white in the centre of the chaos. Smiling, Aizen identified the poor boy as the sole survivor. A few seconds' wait would make good observation of his pet before he exterminated it.

"Ten!" roared the Hollow gleefully, en masse. The number rippled in the air as it was voiced from a thousand throats. Sousuke could see the young student making a pitiful attempt to fight back. He'd achieved shikai already. _Such a waste._

"Shoot to Kill, Shinso!"

A lance of white light shot outwards from the core of the horde, stretching all the way to its edge in the blink of an eye. The boy span in a small, tight circle, slashing the elongated blade through the ranks of Hollow clones instantaneously. His high speed movements sent staccato whip cracks of noise echoing around the field. Skidding to a halt as the 'heavenly spear' retracted again just as fast; the air around him exploded with gore and the glittering lights of a disintegrating Minus soul.

"Seven, six, five…" whistled the silver-haired prodigy, grinning.

Realising that this someone who reached his full potential, nothing wasted, was exactly what he'd been searching for, Aizen walked up to the student with a matching wide smile.

"Was that guy yours?" asked the uncanny young man, reading the captain's calm confidence with incredible intuition. His eyes seemed to be constantly squinting against the brightness of the sun. Perhaps he was albino, so pale and slim.

"Yes," admitted the treacherous taicho, not fearing his witness in the slightest. "Your name?"

"Ichimaru Gin," replied the kitsune-like shinigami. His accent came from Kyoto, polite and friendly with a twist of mocking undertone in the lazy way he half-pronounced words. "I'll be in your Division when I graduate, ne?"

"What makes you so certain?"

"I'm hopin' you'll make sure it happens, taicho!"

**o)0(o**

Drawing his medium-length zanpakuto out from one of his long voluminous sleeves, Gin allowed his spiritual energy to surge. It radiated out in a flickering silvery mist, rolling across the desert like a low-lying cloudbank.

"I consider it a party trick more'n a proper bankai. 'S a bit too indiscriminate fer my tastes." The shinigami unsheathed his sword and flicked it sideways into the air.

"_Shoot at Will, Shinso_!"

He dodged the blade that suddenly materialised, lancing into the space where his body had been. And there were thousands of them flashing in and out of sharp, swift sight. A hundred times more than any Hollow could multiply, appearing wherever his reiatsu had touched.

"Shinso's a backstabber jus' like me!"

The Espada had become leaves scattering before the four winds. The speed and unpredictability of Gin's bankai, the bloodthirsty razor edges; all combined to overcome even the most unbreakable hierro skin. Trapped in a maelstrom of teleporting weapons, Tenebra Shirojos was growing agitated. Her own random sonido sent her crashing into another blade time after time until dark blood flecked the sands.

Gin was the only one capable of dancing in the slender gaps of safety; and made it look graceful, easy. Yet a slit on his cheek exposed that for the lie it was.

When Espada Zero finally snapped and began to lash out at the blades, stopping some and denting several, Ichimaru paused in his evasions and simply plucked the original zanpakuto out of midair. The bankai vanished. He caught sight of a chip in the blade and tutted.

With the coast clear the other Espada returned gingerly, trying to look unflustered. Grimmjaw hid his gashed shoulder from view and sauntered up to Shirojos. The tiny girl was shaking.

"Yo, Zero! Paying attention to us yet?" he scorned, bending down to wave a hand in front of her eyes. Her own white hand shot out and gripped deeply into his neck.

"Little shits that don't know who they're talking to should never dare open their mouths." Her eyes were slanted with anger; jaw clacking mechanically as she spoke. There was a chilling blankness in her posture that spoke of nothing but disrespect for her uninvited comrades.

And just like that, Aizen was among them.

"The instincts can speak now?" He observed the arrancar who was once Kurosaki Karin with a frightening degree of interest. A hand tilted her chin up smoothly, examining the lightless black and white eyes. Warped delight lit his face. "Your potential still grows."

The demon bulled forwards, forcing him to step back as he never had before. His arm was flung away. Her formerly emotionless features were livid. His were oddly pleased, as if proud of the powers he had bequeathed her.

"I hunted aeons for a soul reaper with sufficient reiatsu to endure me. Finding myself fused to a mindless Hollow in an empty shell of a child after the pact?" A harsh hiss, a voice that had dragged itself from beyond the grave to spite him. All movements and all words disjointed, hinting that the humanoid form held no damaged human soul but a devil. "She'll never reach this level in another life. You made her into a lie."

Sousuke understood perfectly, merely confirming his suspicions aloud for the benefit of his more ignorant disciples. "You are the zanpakuto spirit, Naraku."

"_You have wasted my existence._"

They struck in perfect tandem, Naraku lunging with her shadow-rip swords and Aizen conjuring a Caja Negación. Engulfed in a pillar of yellow light before her blades could touch him, she fought the inertia long enough to burn a single vow into his memory.

_I'll send you to hell._

**o)0(o**

_Arrancar Cup!_

**o)0(o**

Starrk had reached a distant corner of the Menos Forest where he could train without endangering the lives of the other arrancars. It was well chosen, a 'Gillian Nest' where legions of weaker Hollows gathered to eat each other and emerge onto the level of Grande Menos. It saved a lot of time hunting the little buggers down individually.

Scrubbing his face tiredly and nodding to Lilynette who now stood beside him, they stopped holding back their passive reiatsu.

_thwump!_

Every moving being in the clearing keeled over dead.

"Now comes the eating…" yawned Coyote. "Gets my jaw so sore with that many. Let's just let the wolves out, shall we?"

A squeaky growl interrupted Lilynette's reply. Shocked that anything could still be alive…undead…whatever they were; the two began to search hurriedly for the source of the noise.

Starrk opened his palm to show his Fraccion what he had caught.

It was a tiny Hollow gecko, with hooked jaws and two spikes protruding from the forehead of its simple little mask. Its glowing red eyes blinked up at them adoringly as it creeled.

"It's so cute!" gasped Lilynette Gingerback, stroking it with a finger only to get snapped at by four rows of minute fangs. "Let's keep it as a pet!"

Starrk nodded and carefully slipped the invincible gecko into his pocket.

"We'll call him Morff."

And so the terrifying Espada gained their very first mascot.

**o)0(o**

_Morff is real, I made him! He sits on my laptop when I write now. =D_

_Please review!_

_Alliriyan~*_


	18. Midnight's Silence

**Hell Butterfly**

**Midnight's Silence**

**~18~**

**o)0(o**

Unsettling dreams had chased Isane from her bed once again, but tonight there was no serene Retsu to lull her back into calmness. The tall woman wandered slowly towards the main Fourth barracks and past them towards the hospital wards. She plaited her lavender hair back into its thin braids with sleepy fingers. A drawn-out yawn, and pondering why the scalpel had transformed into a fish biscuit halfway through abseiling down the Shrine of Penitence.

If only her nightmares were a little less bizarre…then she might get a decent night's rest once in a while.

Entering the closest ward, the lieutenant rubbed the dust of dried tears out of her eyes before reading the paperwork attached to the first bed. As she was up, she might as well be doing something useful. It wouldn't be the first time that broken sleep saved one of her patients during an early morning emergency.

Nor would it be the first time it had led to sadder consequences…

As she moved quietly from bed to bed, whispering to those who could not sleep and tiptoeing around those that slumbered deeply, a hand reached out and grasped her arm.

"…Hakamura-san?"

"Kotetsu-fukutaicho…"

She had learned to recognise this over the years, a tired, yet unwavering lilt in the voice that all such people shared. But she stayed quiet, never prompting the taboo subject.

"I…I've had my fill…of being a shinigami…and going round and round in circles in this ghost town. I'm ready to, to move on but…" The man faltered in the shadows, finding it difficult to word his concerns. "I may never have risen high in the rankings, but my reiatsu…I mastered it well enough to halt my aging. I lost count a long time ago of how many years I've been in Soul Society, and fukutaicho;" his murmurs lowering with every passing second; "I'm sick to death of this place. Rukongai's empty of activity. Seireitei's fixated on the next battle, every day 'kill more Hollows; kill more Hollows'. I miss the real world. And I don't want to wait for a monster to rip me up worse than this before I can finally…"

Now it was fortunate she could foretell his request, because his voice had fallen so hushed in his hyperawareness of the ill and recovering patients all around them that she could no longer hear it.

"Are you absolutely certain?" she asked, stooping close to catch his answer.

"_Yes_."

"I can help you," breathed Isane; "but only if you can convince me it is the right choice."

As she cast a spell to ensure privacy, a supplementary hakudo type that would blur the senses of everyone else in the ward, he told her exactly what she needed to hear. And with a calm heart, she agreed to help him move on.

Bending down to gently kiss the man's forehead, the lieutenant gave him a sincere farewell. "Thank you, Hakamura Nataro; for your hard work and dedication to the Gotei Thirteen, for the plus souls you have saved and the minus souls you have purified. We wish you a peaceful rest and…a future." _He believes in reincarnation, didn't he say?_ she thought briefly, before placing her hands together in an unusual Namaste prayer position.

It was a secret, almost unheard of branch of kido. Delicate, and above all, silent. She whispered the lines of esoteric poetry in her mind, breathing out until her lungs were emptied and holding them so. The air pressed in around her, heavy and charged like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. She heard Nataro sigh and could almost _feel_ him smile.

Scant moments later, there came a simultaneous _crack!_ as every bone in his body snapped. Isane opened her eyes and breathed deeply. Hakamura was gone, leaving just another empty shell to wash and prepare for burial when the new day came.

**o)0(o**

Finished in the wards, Isane moved to the isolation rooms where the air was a little fresher. There were only three or four in use at the moment, including Hinamori and the new enigma 'Ashido Kano'.

Healing him had taken the entire afternoon, and had knocked her out for the rest of the evening. Perhaps she had him to thank for her abysmal sleeping pattern. As a rule, Fourth Squad healers would cast enough kido to kick-start the recovery process and stem any ruptured veins; then leave the patients to rest in the wards. It was a tactic that conserved the energy of the nurses and doctors, so that their skills could be stretched further.

But in a single day, Isane had been requested to fully heal two mortally wounded to perfect health. Rukia's injuries had been...messy to say the least, but at least Kuchiki-taicho's insanely expensive scarf with regenerating properties woven into its fabric had taken the worst of it away already.

Ashido, on the other hand, had been littered with five hundred years' worth of scar tissue and fractured bones. He must have some knack for kido to survive so long, but clearly not enough. She had repaired it all. Of course, old scars were harder to budge, and there was a deep-set exhaustion in the wild man that had sapped her energy with incredible speed. It must have come from never being able to relax, century upon century of battle-frayed nerves. And yet his face was nearly unmarked. Due to the Hollow mask he'd been wearing, perhaps?

Yawning at the memory of a tiring job, Isane flicked through his charts in the scant light provided by the moon beyond the window. There were no important changes in the entries on the observation sheet, so he must have remained in that comatose state since she'd left yesterday.

Perching on the end of the bed, Isane pondered the new arrival in greater detail. He was tall, even tall enough to dwarf her, which was quite the achievement. His hair had come out a rare deep red after she had washed him, and his skin was pale as a ghost's. Unohana-taicho had said there had been no sun in Hueco Mundo, only a white moon hanging low in the starless night sky. It showed.

When he spoke, she nearly had a heart attack.

"It sounded like all his bones broke," muttered the man to himself, wary eyes flicking from side to side. "What sort of Hollow does that? One of the screamers, or the shockwave ones... I can't fight them easily. Perhaps I could set a trap..." His head rolled to one side, and his face became transformed by incomprehension. This was no cave, or rock heap, or tree. It was white and gloomy, yes, but...and what was he lying on? And who was that figure looming over him?

Inching back a little, he realised that his fur cape and the precious, protective masks were gone. Where was his zanpakuto? Had an adjuchas stolen it whilst he was unconscious? He must have been knocked out, for he always slept with one eye open, one ear listening, never totally unaware of his surroundings.

The shadowy form came closer, and a soft voice asked a question that he didn't catch. But that was enough to explain the situation to him.

There were no soft voices in Hueco Mundo. There were no soft beds, no clean flat walls, no lack of old aches in his body and absence of pain. And the air was so fresh and oddly sharp from antiseptic, the ambient reiatsu pure instead of corroded. There was no other explanation.

"Am I mad again?" he asked out loud, not really to seek an answer from these figments of his imagination, but to ensure he wasn't still asleep. Yet he couldn't remember the last time he'd dreamed of Soul Society and civilisation; could barely recall what these objects around him were.

"Um...no, you should be fine, I ran a diagnostic kido after healing you." It was the soft voice again, nothing like the strident, business-like tones of that 'Rukia' he'd invented earlier. He thought he might have released his shikai at some point, which would help him to understand this mess. It was always a bad idea to call out his zanpakuto Kajouhi, it was so garish and attention-grabbing. It never ended well, bringing that one into play. He'd probably been mobbed by Hollows or drained his pathetic reserves of reiatsu. Ugh. That meant hunting for 'food'.

Isane watched the man stop muttering inaudibly and wince in distaste. No one had mentioned he was a lunatic before delegating all responsibility to her. Such was the life of a member of Fourth...totally downtrodden and unappreciated.

"Are you hungry or thirsty at all?" she prompted, waving a hand in front of his face.

"Thinking about real food will only make the Hollow meat taste more foul," came the cringing answer.

Now it was Isane's turn to wince.

"The bone-cracking Hollow!" hissed Ashido suddenly. "May have left something I can scavenge...at least need to try to escape it..."

As he sat up with surprising ease, the older Kotetsu sister hurried to push him down again. She couldn't have a demented patient wandering the wards and mistaking things for Hollows that had to be killed. "There's no bone-cracker here! That was actually a side effect of a kido I performed! Calm down..." -His senses must be insanely acute to hear that from so far away AND know what it was.-

"What kind of kido does that?" Kano asked the apparition, playing along. Occasionally humouring his subconscious led to a faster recovery. And he never, ever let go of his survival instincts. It was that uncanny skill that had allowed him to survive the depths of Hueco Mundo.

"It is a...ah...you can't tell anyone else this, as it is actually a forbidden technique that might get me expelled from the Gotei...what you heard was a consequence of a silent kido for...euthanasia."

"What?"

"It is used to help people die." Saying it aloud was causing the guilt to pile up on Isane's shoulders - it was a secret, private act, only performed by personal choice. Telling a crazy man who might blab it to anyone was excruciating. "It began as a mercy killing technique for the kido corps on the battlefield; now it is used for shinigami whose souls are tied too tightly to their spiritual forms for them to move on when they wish. Apparently the bones shatter afterwards because the bond was so strong. Please don't panic about Hollows. That was what you heard."

Ashido nodded in understanding, and Isane had to admit he was the most lucid madman she'd ever met if he could make sense of that.

"Maybe I should too..." The words slipped out, and he was far less surprised than she. "Five hundred years, or how much more than that...five hundred years of mass genocide of Hollows in the heart of their own domain...and I didn't make the slightest dent. I know I didn't," he said to himself quietly. "There were always ten times as many hiding in the shadows for every dozen I brought down." He was subdued. It was unpleasant to admit that an aeon of sacrifice had changed nothing.

The thought made Isane shiver.

"Maybe I dreamt up Rukia so she could tell me to stop this endless mission... Maybe you're my way out... Maybe I've had enough of it now..."

She bit her lip, it seemed wrong to accept a plea from a man who had no idea he was free. But if his mind stayed in Hueco Mundo regardless, then in truth he was no closer to home than before.

"I-if you're sure..." The words fell reluctantly from her mouth: this was nothing like Hakamura-san who had known exactly what he was choosing. What would Rukia, and her brother, and the others Ashido had helped say? They wouldn't know what he had decided, it would be a failure to save falling upon Unohana-taicho's back. "If you're sure..."

But he looked so helplessly lost within his own paranoia. She'd seen people suffer like that endlessly before, and was less willing to see the same pointless agony repeat itself.

"I can help you."

Kano nodded, staring at her steadily with his almond eyes, as if he almost believed she was real.

Far more hesitantly than before, Kotetsu Isane leaned down and stroked a comforting hand through his old blood-coloured hair. She would prefer to look after him properly, thank him properly for centuries of dutiful toiling against the minus spirits. But it was his choice. Always and only ever his choice. She pressed the farewell kiss against his lips, because unlike Hakamura this man had been alone for time out of mind. Pulling away, she closed her eyes sadly and pushed her hands together.

Unseen, Ashido seemed to be undergoing a panic attack. Not even hearing her words of gratitude and goodbye. What was that? What had she done? A nameless something, an act of kindness he had forgotten could even exist countless decades ago. How could anything in Hueco Mundo possibly remind him of that, a place of crystallised trees and hard cold surfaces to the point that the sand was sharp enough to cut his feet, and the bristles of his fur coat were little more than prickling needles?

Softness, kindness; gentle caring...none were real in the Menos Forest, not even daring to visit his nightmares and hallucinations. There was no colour in that dimension past the glowing red of their vicious eyes, and the fireworks in the zanpakuto he must always keep sealed. But here there were touches of warm gold in the figure's braids. Subtle, pale purple in her hair. And the whitewashed hospital room was the shade of cotton, not of bone.

Isane's hands were dragged apart in an instant, strong arms pulled her down inexorably. She squeaked in surprise, but his embrace was too rock-solid for her to wrestle out of. Ashido was clinging to her like a lost child.

"Is this real? Am I really here?" asked Kano desparately, his voice shaking. "I'll believe you this time...I'll trust you if you tell me the truth. Am I really back home in Seireitei?!"

She relaxed, and rested her head beside his. His terrified breaths were panting down the neck of her haori. Yet no matter how painful his grip was, it was infinitely preferable to just letting him slip into death.

"This is all real," she reassured him, tentative, supportive. "You're in the Fourth Squad hospital barracks, and you were brought back from Hueco Mundo by Kuchiki Rukia. I am the Fourth Lieutenant under Unohana Retsu, and I healed you yesterday. That's why your scars and injuries are gone. It's not because you're dreaming."

The name was familiar, transporting him back to a time he'd given up on. The truth was beginning to pierce through, and he was finding it easier and easier to accept if only he stopped resisting. If he gave it a tiny, slight chance…perhaps this time he wouldn't wake up in ditch with the claws of a Hollow wrapped round his neck. Old habits and old lies engrained in his mind died hard. But this time was different. Please, _please_ let this time be different.

All that had been keeping him going there was not duty or survival. He just didn't want to give a Hollow the pleasure of killing him.

_Let that be over._

"Unohana is still here?" repeated Ashido, releasing her slightly. Isane sat up and rubbed her now-aching ribs. "Yes. Also Yamamoto-soutaicho, Kyoraku and Ukitake, and I'm not sure who else would have been in office five hundred years ago."

"Ran'Tao-taicho headed science and research..." said the red head slowly. "A Kuchiki was captain then too, I think. I don't even remember my squad number." He looked at her again, wondrously. "I'm really back here?"

Tears were streaming down his face as he began to laugh in the quiet, stammering manner of one who had forgotten how.

"Thank you," he breathed, holding the first truly real person he had met in five hundred years tight. "Thank you, thank you..."

**o)0(o**

As Isane hurried back to her lieutenant's quarters, she collided into her captain.

"Another bad dream, Isane-san?" asked Unohana, catching her deputy before the poor girl fell over.

"Um, yes! But I'm fine now! And Kano-san has woken up!"

"'Kano-san'?" repeated Retsu carefully. Isane flushed bright red.

"Um, he's the shinigami brought back from Hueco Mundo by the Kuchikis, I had to convince him he wasn't hallucinating, and he seems to be fine now."

The taicho smiled and wondered in an interested tone, "How does one do such a thing?"

If possible, Isane blushed even deeper, and fled to her rooms without answering. Embracing a vulnerable patient aside, the euthanasia kido was an _unspoken_ arrangement among the ranked officers of Fourth and come hell or high water it was going to _stay _that way!

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	19. Gotei Elite

**Hell Butterfly**

**Gotei Elite**

**~19~**

**o)0(o**

"Why aren't we moving faster?" demanded Rukia, hauling Hinamori Momo along by an arm. The poor woman looked a little flustered, she was moving straight from intensive care to the rarest of full-attendance Captain Meetings. "There could be an emergency!"

Isane, the one holding them back, replied with a smile. "Then we wouldn't want to arrive out of breath and incapable of helping." In actual fact, she was remembering something Unohana had not said at her initiation into Fourth.

"_And of course it doesn't do for the relief squad to be eaten by the Hollows halfway through the fight, so one should endeavour to approach once the reiatsu has weakened a little. Alternatively, Isane-san, you could focus on combat, and try to reduce the number of casualties created in the first place."_

"_I see," nodded the girl, trotting slightly ahead of her new taicho. Then the other implication sunk in._

_Slow down, stop._

_Better keep Fourth Division in business._

**o)0(o**

There was a strange beast prowling the polished floorboards of the Captains' Chamber. Its white bone face flicked from side to side suspiciously, a wary animal testing new territory. Its prickly body was hunched; taking smooth, weightless steps on quiet bare feet.

The Captains were looking at it weirdly.

"What is this?" asked Kyoraku suspiciously. "The human kids didn't bring a pet back with them, did they?"

Soutaicho Yamamoto-Genryuusai Shigekuni raised his voice for all his protégés to hear. "This is Soul Society's pride."

"When can I dissect it?" murmured Kurotsuchi to his fukutaicho mod-daughter Nemu.

"This shinigami has battled the Hollows in their own territory, alone, for over five hundred years. His zanpakuto has cleansed more lost souls than could be counted by the thousand petals of Kuchiki-taicho's Senbonzakura."

A few of the captains blinked. They were impressive words, and doubly shocking in that they fell from the Soutaicho's mouth, yet their guest of honour still looked like a scraggy little Hollow with a moth-eaten fur hide.

Byakuya, on the other hand, was recalling the petrified trees smothered in tally marks and the rocks carved over and over with the man's name lest he forget it. There were simple kill counts, rough pictures of Gillians, weatherworn sketches of notable adjuchas opponents etched into the landscape all throughout the underground forest. Even a rate of three Hollows killed per day for five hundred years would yield well over half a million victories, and the lost reaper had been far exceeding this. The marks of his keeping count were scattered everywhere so as not to lead the enemy to his many hideouts. Byakuya remembered when Rukia had led him to a gravesite, asking that he leave a prayer where their predecessors had fallen. The most scratches had been there, where Ashido had not been able to relocate his friends' final resting places as he did his dens. The captain had released his shikai out of curiosity, and the notches had outnumbered the petals the way the stars outnumbered the seas.

"This is Ashido Kano, who has finally returned from Hueco Mundo."

Ukitake smacked his palm and pointed at the mysterious figure with a grin. "I remember him!"

"Good for you…" replied Kyoraku calmly. "I don't. I only remember the girls' names."

"The pretty ones," sighed Jyuushiro, punching his oldest friend in the ribs. "You're still hopeless. Ashido Kano was that really zealous kid from the old Eleventh. I remember him because he was convinced he could out-drink us and got so hammered Retsu-chan had to scrape him off the floor with kido. He had bright purple hair."

The man tilted up his Hollow mask helm when the captains began to address him directly. He was glad he had the masks back; they were rarer than sunlight in the Menos Forest. And his bristling pelt had been cleaned, now feeling oddly comfortable, and not smelling half so bad. Standing in the middle of a taicho council felt so surreal…

"_That's not purple, Jyuushiro! You fail. Stop pretending to be clever."_

"_There was definitely an Ashido in Eleventh!"_

"I want this guy back in my squad," grinned Zaraki.

"I have no intention of putting him in anyone's squad!" rumbled the Soutaicho disapprovingly.

Ashido wasn't sure how to react to that. After five hundred years of routine, he was pretty sure he'd dive back into Hueco Mundo rather than face banishment - retirement, they might call it - from the Gotei 13 and a life of never again lifting his zanpakuto against a Hollow.

Yamamoto looked deep into the eyes of the lost and found shinigami. He found the resolve of a man who had been driven from sanity to insanity and sane again staring back at him, an absolute dedication to duty and calm determination. Lasting qualities born of survival.

Kano had learned never to hesitate when his teammates had fallen. The last five hundred years had merely been reinforcement.

"My only concern," continued the Commander-General; "is whether he has achieved bankai. And even that I am willing to waive."

The room fell silent for half a second, before the quick-witted captains gave a hearty cheer. Ashido blinked rapidly, looking round at them with darting eyes full of surprise. What exactly did bankai have to do with an honourable discharge?

Isane noticed his confusion before he had to stoop to asking.

"It's simple," she assured him; "Ashido-taicho."

The newly dubbed Ashido taicho calmly replaced his mask, turned on his heel; and flash stepped straight out of there.

**o)0(o**

Ridiculous. The yearning for Soul Society had become so strong that he'd dreamed of returning home a hero, finding an instant connection with a fukutaicho healer, and being promoted to captain. All such whimsies he had thrown away a long time ago. They were the daydreams of an idiot who was blind to his situation. And as the endless maze of Seireitei twisted and turned around him, he hoped that his insanity would soon be cured. The nostalgia was too painful. The delusions weren't worth having.

And nothing, absolutely nothing; would convince him that the Soutaicho would welcome a denizen of Hueco Mundo with open arms and waive the requirement of having bankai to become captain. Never. That was an impossibility. He was only grateful that he had realised his mistake before falling for the dream-world fully and becoming open to attack.

Back in the grand hall, the Captains stared at the empty patch of air which had once contained their lost-and-found colleague.

"Reliability is also to be considered when selecting for a Captain's post, is it not?" remarked Soi Fon tartly.

The Soutaicho looked a little aggrieved, although it was difficult to read his expression through the bushy eyebrows and beard. "I was informed that he had been healed fully in body _and mind_, Kotetsu-fukutaicho."

Isane gulped, and fled after her charge. It looked like he needed convincing again that some things weren't too good to be true.

**o)0(o**

"Kano-san, please come back! Kano!" She followed his meagre spiritual trail through street after street in a matter of seconds. "Ashidooo?"

Eventually she caught up and tried to make him stop. Preferably an arm lock, so that she could frogmarch him back to the council, however with that much fur and that many skulls in the way it wasn't worth the hassle. So she tripped him up instead.

Once he had thudded to the cobbled ground, she knelt down beside him and sighed.

"Kano-san, please stop doubting reality. Wouldn't your zanpakuto be able to tell you if all this wasn't real? You need to calm down and accept that things have changed."

"The Soutaicho would never change that much," replied the fallen shinigami. Once again, he seemed perfectly lucid, just totally deluded. "Nor would there be a captain carrying a toy cat around, or a captain with a pink-haired five-year-old fukutaicho, or a giant talking fox captain, or a puppet fukutaicho, or an albino ten-year-old in a captain's jacket, or-!"

"Okay, okay! When you put it that way...you do begin to sound perfectly justified." Isane patted the ogre-like skull on his head nervously. "Thank the heavens you didn't reel that off in front of them. But that's the way things are; bankai is rare, so we must take whoever we can get as captains. There are few exceptions, such as the former ryoka Kurosaki Ichigo; and myself. As a medical kido specialist tied to my division, I do not come under consideration. And there may be some who have attained bankai in secret, but it remains a scarce ability."

Ashido sat up and stared at the blue sky that stretched far beyond the limits of his imagination. The colour hurt his eyes even as he drank it in. "So rare that Yamamoto-sama would not even ask it of me?"

"Rukia said that you were powerful enough to kill an adjuchas without shikai, and could stand against Kuchiki Byakuya with shikai alone. That is a very high calibre of power, Ashido-san."

"Forgive me if I am slow to adjust," replied the man in a jaded voice; "but this would not be the first time I had tricked myself into believing I was home."

Isane smiled at that. Oddly, it reminded her of her strange dreams, and how convinced she could be until she woke up. But she had also figured out what to say to wake this man up. Byakuya had told her how to write the kanji of his name - 'elegant forgetful person' for Ashido, and more importantly 'hunting talent' for Kano. In times like these, that hunting talent was sorely needed.

"Kano," she began, dropping all honorifics. "Things may be different here now, but you should have expected change after all this time. Tell me,"

He glanced at her with those ethereal grey eyes.

"Hueco Mundo has been changing recently, hasn't it?"

Ashido set his mouth in a thin line, frowning. "These are things that happen above the sands, whilst I live underneath them. But the white castle was rebuilt, and is filled with strange and dense reiatsu. And no matter how many Hollows I have killed, now there are more."

Isane placed a hand upon his shoulder and told the truths that Rukia had feared to.

"Soul Society has been betrayed by three captains, and their leader is Aizen..."

**o)0(o**

The wild reaper god burst back into the captain's hall, his mask returned to its old spot on his fur cloak and his livid face clear for all to see. There was no hint of madness, only anger.

"Soutaicho Yamamoto-Genryuusai-sama." He greeted the Commander-General archaically, yet his voice was brisk. "I have been debriefed that the council of Central 46 were murdered and that arrancars are poised to invade Soul Society and the real world at the will of a traitor shinigami."

"That is indeed the case," confirmed Yamamoto in his ancient and creaking voice.

"Their numbers are immense. There would be a thousand to every fighter in Seireitei, and a hundred to every soul in Rukongai besides. Without counting the new breed of hellspawn your traitor has created." His attitude was simple, factual. The facts were terrifying. And then Ashido Kano answered the question they had not yet asked.

"Bankai...is something I achieved long ago. I accept the position as captain."

**o)0(o**

"Hisagi," rumbled Yamamoto. "I trust you will be able to make Ashido-taicho's transition back into the Gotei smooth."

"Yup," chirped the purple-haired lieutenant, waving to draw his new taicho's attention. "Yo, newbie-taicho, my name's Hisagi Shuuhei. Welcome to Ninth Division. Don't worry about the paperwork, I'm good at it."

"What is paperwork?" asked Kano blankly as he moved to stand beside the heavily-tattooed young man.

The room temperature fell several degrees. Toushiro looked vaguely murderous, and Matsumoto was already edging out of sight. "_Hide the trees! Down with paper!_" she laughed in a loud whisper, wiggling her eyebrows at her fellow officers.

"I run the local magazine, too. We could do a great article on you!" continued Hisagi bravely. Ashido looked mystified, and he was starting to dislike being so out of his element. When could he start killing Hollows again?

"About that," coughed the First Division fukutaicho. "Due to the current situation, we're cancelling the Shinigami Gazette."

Heartbroken, Shuuhei's lip wobbled slightly; yet he hid his pain for he was a man.

The Soutaicho struck the hardwood floor with his staff, catching the attention of the room again like a judge wielding a gavel. "There are many matters to attend to!" he reminded them harshly, unwilling to waste time. "Kira Izuru!"

"Soutaicho?" Kira was a melancholy man these days. Betrayal from the captains he trusted at every turn had extinguished a little of the light he used to have. His best friends were either in isolation at the Fourth's psychiatric ward, or chasing their new comrades into danger in other dimensions. With Momo and Renji gone, he'd occasionally tried the company of Matsumoto, but she no longer drank for fun. Rather she spent her nights drowning similar sorrows to his own.

"Bad luck seems to have truly come in threes for you," noted the patriarch gravely. Izuru bowed his head just as his zanpakuto did. "The issue of trust is one of the most important considerations between a taicho and their second in command. Ichimaru broke that, and Amagai ground it to dust. I apologise, but you must suffer another idiot in command."

That last was said so quietly that Kira could barely hear it, and as he raised his head to ask the Commander to repeat himself, he found his view obstructed by the grinning face of Renji. Flinching back a step, he glared at him. "_What are you doing?_" hissed the blond man. "_The Soutaicko is in the middle of talking to me!_"

"_About your new captain?_"

"_Of course, you idiot!_"

"_Wow, I wonder who that might be!_" Renji's smile grew even wider, if that was possible. "I wonder who here has bankai, and is someone you can trust because you've known them for years and years, and who should make a good captain because they were trained by Kuchiki-taicho…hmmm…"

They stared at each other, one suspicious, one maniacally overjoyed. And without another word needing to be said, Renji gave Kira a massive high five that echoed around the room, and sauntered around him to stand in his new spot as captain.

"Welcome to Third Division, Abarai-taicho!"

"Cheers, Kira-fukutaicho! And yes, it does feel great to be the first of us to gain captain rank!" He leaned his chin on his palm lazily, resting his elbow on Izuru's shoulder as if the poor guy was a table. "My first command is for you to stop being so bloody miserable."

Kira ignored this, though his easy smile grew a little strained. "Maybe you could buy some new sunglasses to celebrate, Renji."

"Good idea. Maybe I will."

"But I won't be doing all the paperwork for you."

"…Bastard…"

**o)0(o**

Hinamori was huddled in the empty shadow of Aizen's presence, shivering and alone. It could not be clearer that the ground she stood upon was cursed. That she was not wanted as a lieutenant, nor was her squad so easily fixed as the others.

The memory of a traitor could be so conspicuous.

Yamamoto watched her shrink as he approached, when she was such a small girl to begin with. He leant forwards, staring into her large and tremulous eyes with the piercing aura of the strongest shinigami in two thousand years of Seireitei.

He had only one question for her, and he asked it in a voice that was old, as old as the city he had built.

"Love or loyalty?"

She was incapable of looking away, and fumbled out an answer.

"Th-th-they shou, shhh…should be the same. They are the same. They should be."

"Should?"

Momo clutched at her hands nervously. "I don't…love anyone. But I am loyal to Soul Society. And nothing else."

A few of the people in the room stiffened at that. Renji, Izuru, Rukia…but most of all Toushiro. She didn't love anyone? Did friendships and family mean nothing to her since Aizen had ripped her heart out?

"It is no secret that you have been emotionally wounded." The Soutaicho seemed grimmer than usual. How many of his officers would tell that it was regret rather than revulsion that coloured his words.

The young woman looked away. She wanted to rise above the things that had been done to her, she truly did. However she was hardly alone if the trouble was being stronger than Aizen.

"Do you want to heal?"

"Yes!" replied Momo, instantly, shocked by the sudden question.

"Fifth division is advanced in kido as a rule, is it not?"

"Yes! Many of our members are top-class kido experts!" She was barking out the answers as if on parade, such was the pressure of the Commander's full attention.

"And Kotetsu-fukutaicho." Finally he turned away, and Hinamori could breathe normally again. "You have been lieutenant to my most experienced captain for a long time now. After Retsu you are our leading medical expert. And besides your specialism I understand you attained bankai many years back."

"Yes." Isane was rather confused. "I found that stronger bonds with Itegumo improved my stamina and skill at kido, so I aimed as high as I could in training. But I'm needed where I am, Soutaicho. With all due respect, mid-war is _not_ the time to weaken the hospital division!"

For a moment she thought she would be burnt to a crisp for her back-talk. But then the unheard of occurred, and the Commander-General laughed.

"Kotetsu-taicho. You are charged with developing the Fifth into a secondary medical division. You will be able to maximise on the strengths of a fukutaicho and a squadron that excel in kido control. Healing the wounded is as great a power as the ability to rip a Hollow in half, and far more rare. The more shinigami who can do first aid, the less we will lose when this war comes to a head."

Floored, Isane did not move from where she stood beside Unohana.

"Oh my," said Retsu gently. "This will be a first time for _me_ to have a rival." Isane shuddered. Even the members of Fourth Squad found their taicho scary.

"Do not hesitate because the Fifth has been tainted by Aizen. It never belonged to that traitor: it is mine, and always has been." Yamamoto's eyes raked down the ranks of his captains, making sure they all understood the same was true of their own divisions.

Retsu gave her ex-lieutenant a soft push in the direction of her new status. Isane tottered over and stood bolt-upright next to Hinamori.

"Hi, Momo…"

"Hello Isane," peeped her fukutaicho. "Congratulations, and, um…welcome."

"He makes it sound so _easy_," wailed the shinigami equivalent of a consultant surgeon-psychiatrist.

Momo hid a smile and embraced her friend. They had grown quite close whilst Hinamori was in intensive care. "There, there. I know you can do it, Isane-chan."

No other candidate would have erased the Fifth's past so effectively.

**o)0(o**

The old man returned to his place at the head of the hallway. "The game has changed," he announced. "We are moving from defensive patrols and guerrilla tactics to a state of war. We have not been pushed to this degree since the time of the Quincies, and they did not compare in numbers nor power to our current enemies for they were still only living humans, when all was said and done. The Bounto were strong, but inevitably fading out of the world. Those who created the bakkoto relied on weak foundations, parasitic powers. This war will be different.

"Our enemy knows us inside out. The Hollows we have fought back for generations and centuries are changing, and we are no longer fighting souls without faces. But we cannot hesitate to go in for the kill simply because we can read their emotions! I will no longer ignore Seats who have kept their bankai secret, out of convenience! Any who fight at half power will deserve the death that comes to them. Make that known to your squads! We are no longer dealing with bleeding-heart ryoka who will heal the hand that hurts them. One day this battle will have a frontline, and on that day all of our troops will be taking part. Make them realise that they are now fighting for survival. Practice drills are over! Training is passed! What we need now is growth!

"Until then, we can only strike back at Aizen as he targets us. Though we may have Garganta technology on hand now, I will not waste resources on what Ashido-taicho has proven to be an endless exercise. Be aware at all times. Carry your zanpakutos at all times. Ambush can come even in the middle of a senkai gate."

And yet, even as he spoke of a doom-laden future, the younger reapers in the room where realising that they had never seen their leader so invigorated. He seemed to thrive on the prospect of chaos.

"Kuchiki Rukia, bring the coats-of-office of the new captains here."

Rukia ran to obey, scowling the moment she was out of the chamber. Was that the sole reason she had been called to this meeting? To be a dogsbody?

She couldn't help but smile all the same. Ashido had been instantly accepted, and his promotion was thanks to her. She had committed to bringing him back to Soul Society, and had followed through on that even half-dead, with the support of Nii-sama. Together they had done a very good thing. It was a surprising new bond between them, not that she would ever know if her adoptive brother felt the same way.

And Momo was back! Still shaken, but recovering all the same. Evidence that Aizen's hold could be broken. Another good thing.

Renji, a captain. To think that she'd been so much more the ringleader back when they were street orphans, with all the other children that died so young and came into Rukongai so small. Renji had completely overtaken her now. Pride and jealously glowed equally in her chest – but damn that Nii-sama! How strong could she be without him holding her back from the rankings? Fourth Seat, perhaps…the eternal battle between the joint Third Seats was something she'd rather stay out of. She still didn't feel like she compared to Kaien-dono.

Whilst waiting for one of the ninja-messengers who had been waiting for her to fetch the white robes, she began to reconsider that.

In fact, she had defeated Kaien-dono. She had killed an Espada who had the combined powers of a ridiculous number of other Hollows and humans, even if all that amounted to was a tentacle-y blob of not much – rather than the Armageddon Now Rukia had pictured when Aaroniero had bragged about using all his abilities at once. But he had underestimated her, and paid the highest forfeit for doing so.

The longer she thought about it, the more she was convinced that, yes, she had outgrown Kaien-dono, may he rest in peace. And Nii-sama was an idiot to try and keep her out of danger when she was in a war. Hell, she was friends with Ichigo and Urahara. She was screwed no matter what her ranking.

And please. She could _so_ take Kiyone and Sentaro single-handed.

The messenger was taking a long time, so she leaned back against a wall, pulled out a sketchbook and began to doodle all the different ways she could defeat the Third Seats with one hand tied behind her back.

When he coughed, having returned a few minutes later and been totally ignored, she hastily hid the pen and pad. "Thank you," she muttered, taking the armfuls of white fabric that she couldn't keep. Yet.

"One more thing!" said the man quickly before she shunpoed away. He placed a wooden crest with a violet armband on top of her burden.

A fukutaicho badge? Well, yes, if Unohana or Nii-sama had replacements in mind already…but couldn't they take the existing bands?

As she ran back to the captains' hall, her pace grew slower and slower.

In fact, that badge that kept bumping her nose as she jogged with the tall pile of cloth…it had the kanji for Squad Thirteen on it.

And in her opinion, a good fukutaicho was one that took initiative. A lieutenant should know and play to their own strengths. Definitely.

And watching Kiyone and Sentaro fight over it would just be pitiful.

Before she walked back into the chamber, Rukia stopped, hopped on one leg and balanced the folded white haoris on her raised knee. Tying the badge around the arm that would be hidden from Nii-sama as she re-entered the room, the petite shinigami then hefted the coats back into her arms and stepped bravely into the hall.

Everyone was staring at her. She handed out the cloaks to their respective owners with wide grins to all and a wink shared with Renji. Her oldest friend, he spotted the armband and moved surreptitiously to the side to block Byakuya's view of it.

"_Stop laughing! He'll notice!_" whispered the dark-haired woman, trying to keep a straight face.

"_Good luck, but you're gonna be in such deep shit when he finds out!_" cackled Renji under his breath.

Task completed, Rukia fled back to her captain's side. As the Soutaicho resumed talking, she affected to look innocent.

"It suits you, Rukia;" murmured Jyuushiro, sending her a sideways glance and a swift smile. "If we can walk out of here without him seeing it, I should think we'll get away with it." Relief washed over her. Thank goodness, that _was_ what Ukitake-taicho had intended.

Kiyone and Sentaro looked round to see what they were talking about, and froze with matching horrified expressions. Before the two could spark a brawl, Rukia glared at them. Her eyes flashed bright blue with the strength of her conviction. Hopefully no one else would notice the small spike in reiatsu in a room stuffed with taichos.

The two Third Seats abruptly shut their mouths and faced forwards centre.

Yamamoto-Genryuusai was drawing his speech to a close. She was almost home and dry.

"And as this war progresses," roared the Commander-General finally; "I want you all to remind _everyone_ why we are the _Gotei Elite_!"

**o)0(o**

"Not so fast," growled Zaraki with a ferocious grin, blocking the path of the new captains as everyone filed out of the room. He tapped the jagged blade of his zanpakuto against his shoulder. "We still gotta test how strong you are. Three against one." The berserker loomed over them eerily. "That way one of yer might survive…"

"All of you," snapped the Soutaicho in passing. Isane and Renji turned to him as if he was a lifesaver. "Don't knock over all my pillars this time. Especially you, Renji. Repairs will be coming out of your budget."

Their hearts plummeted. Meanwhile Ashido just raced past them, chasing Zaraki to open ground in a trail of fireworks. "Whirl! Kajouhi!"

Renji and Isane sighed, followed the two to the training areas, and the moment Kenpachi began to fight back drew their zanpakutos.

In unison all three of the new captains shouted that all-important word.

"BANKAI!"

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden_

**o)0(o**

Rukia: *flaunts badge* WHAT'S THAT ICHIGO? I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF HOW AWESOME I AM!

Ichigo: Where are the others?

Rukia: I THINK ZARAKI IS KILLING THEM. APPARENTLY ASHIDO IS ENJOYING HIMSELF. YOU MIGHT BE SAFE FROM KENPACHI NOW. BY THE WAY, NOUGHT TO FUKUTAICHO IN TEN SECONDS? I RAWK!

Ichigo: O…kay…but I can still kick your ass!

Chappy: Oh No He Did-n't!

**o)0(o**

Ichigo: So they welcomed you back?  
Ashido: There was no problem. I still have my license to reap after all. *whips out an archaic shinigami badge*  
Rukia: …*bursts out laughing*

Ichigo: *sweatdrop* I get why no one recognises that skull thing Ukitake gave me …it's five hundred years out of date…  
Ashido: Ah! You have one too!

**o)0(o**

_Author notes: If you would like to learn exactly why Toushiro hates trees so much, please read 'Because of Hormones' by my Beta Pippin's Socks. It's hilarious (and Torin). Also, the next two chapters will be the promised filler arc, but don't run away! They contain plot points! I just thought the idea was too fun to ignore._

_Alliriyan~*_


	20. The Cult of Prometheus

**Hell Butterfly**

**The Cult of Prometheus**

**~20~**

**o)0(o**

A mad howling like the baying of a crazed pack of dogs breaks the quiet night, splintering the attention of all who hear it.

Yet those who can hear it are small in number.

The thundering crash of a truck piling into the side of a house is noticed by all.

Yet those who dare move to witness it are few.

The screams of a girl are weak after the throat has been bruised, tossed to the floor like a ragdoll.

Yet those who fight to save her are only two.

Power is ripped from the seat of a reaper's soul with the single stab of a blade. A new god is born as he is killed, and his strength is ferocious. And beside that ghost is a woman in white, searching for the zanpakuto that slipped away through her bloodstained fingers.

No normal human on that dark Karakura street can see them.

Yet there is one who does.

**o)0(o**

Ichigo was helping Inoue pack. Due to all the hassle of invading Hueco Mundo, trekking across deserts, fighting death matches against zombiefied younger siblings, and calling out Gotei captains once your own efforts had epically failed; someone somewhere had decided that Inoue should move into the Kurosaki Clinic. After all, Aizen might seek revenge against she who had out-sneaked him, and they had never discovered his true motive behind kidnapping her.

As he piled chopping boards and woks and cutlery haphazardly into a cardboard box, Ichigo tried not to think about the home recipe scrapbook he had found in a drawer.

Red bean paste ramen. Red bean paste okonomiyaki with jellied eels and wasabi. Red bean paste on a full English fried breakfast with sushi, green tea ice cream and fried scorpions on sticks on the side. He shuddered. Cooking lessons with Yuzu would definitely be in order before the mad girl poisoned herself.

Once the kitchen cupboards were cleared out, and the food from the fridge that had grown disgustingly mouldy in her absence was thrown away, Ichigo began to look for the next job to do.

Inoue was talking on the phone in the living/dining/bedroom. Her more traditional, space-saving set up was very different to his own Western house.

"Aunt Senko, I've decided to move out of this flat. No…there's no sumo wrestler this time. Yes I know they can't trash brick walls. But anyway, I need to move out of this area because-"

Suddenly she covered the mouthpiece and hissed at Ichigo: "Kurosaki-kun! Do I tell the truth or pretend to be sick?"

"You can't tell her the truth, dumbass! But don't say you're sick either; Oyaji's license would get revoked if he faked paperwork. Just make something up!"

"Okay! -Aunt? I haven't rung you in so long because I was kidnapped!"

Ichigo smacked his palm against his forehead. Nice one. Very subtle.

"A gang kidnapped me! They locked me in a room for days," Inoue's voice wobbled and she started to pace nervously. "I don't know what they wanted. No, I'm not lying. Or drunk. I don't do drugs! Aunt - ! …No," Orihime crossed her fingers guiltily. "I don't hallucinate fairies anymore." Her face fell, as her relative continued to push for evidence. "O-of course the police are involved. Several captains, in fact." She closed her eyes, voice becoming tired. "Well, there's nothing you can do from that far away. Please don't worry about it. This is why I'm moving."

A long silence. Near the latter end of it, Inoue blushed bright red. "Ah, no, they didn't do anything like that to me, Aunt Senko." He could guess what that was about. She and Ichigo shared a joint look of horror at the resulting mental image.

"Ulquiorra…" whispered Orihime queasily.

"Just don't think about it," replied her fellow redhead, trying desperately hard to keep his mind blank.

"The Kurosaki Clinic. Where Sora…yeah. They um, they think of all my friends it's the safest because people wouldn't trash a hospital…"

Whilst Inoue returned to her phone call, discussing contracts and rent and food money; Ichigo's mind began to drift. He idly read a poster on the wall. It was some sort of English quotation.

_"You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizons. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about - the more you have left when anything happens."_

He was fine up until the word 'indignant'. Freakish language. Now he might secretly like Shakespeare but he would never try to translate it himself. He'd once found all the archaic these and thous amusing. At least until Rukia had recited the entire collection as swoopingly dramatically as possible for ten nights in a row. She had claimed it was in order to 'learn the modern ways of speech', but he knew she just did it to piss him off.

_The more you will have left when anything is lost._

Ichigo pondered that for a while. Did having a war on count?

"I'll give you the new number. The deal still stands? Okay. …Bye."

"Deal?" asked the shinigami, yawning.

"Oh." Inoue gave a half-smile. "So long as I stay among the top three students in school, my uncle will pay for me to live in Karakura."

He was surprised. This was the first he'd heard of it.

"And I won't have to go back to my parents…" She suddenly seemed very interested in the tatami mat flooring. "I didn't want to waste everything my brother did for me. And working hard fills the time."

Ichigo felt like he'd totally invaded her privacy with a single word. He picked up a crate of books to change the subject. "Right, yeah, that makes sense…where do you want these?"

Dragging a box of clothes out of the corner, Inoue leapt back into tidying mode. "So let's do lots of studying tonight, Kurosaki-kun! We have school tomorrow!"

He gaped at her. "You're kidding me. Oh, hell…"

**o)0(o**

"K-Kurosaki-kun! Why are you putting my things there? Isn't that Karin's...?"

Ichigo stared at the vacant half of the twins' room for a long, silent moment; then dumped the boxes on the bed unceremoniously and walked out with a tense expression.

"Kurosaki..." Inoue watched him leave in disbelief, turning to Yuzu who was hovering by her side. "Kurosaki-chan, I thought I'd be put in a spare room or on the fold-out bed Kuchiki-san had when she stayed here. I'm sorry, I'll move my things, I can't take Karin-chan's place. A futon in the living room or something would be better."

"Don't worry...Ichi-nii's been like this before."

"Huh?"

Showing an unusual level of acceptance and maturity, Yuzu began to clear her murdered sister's belongings off the bed, where they were getting mixed up with Orihime's.

Out loud, she remembered when they were little. "He used to sit by the river all the time, saying he was trying to remember what had happened because it was a blur; but we all knew he was waiting for Kaa-chan to come back. He would search for her ghost for hours, he used to hate that hers was the only one he couldn't see."

Inoue bit her lip, recalling the lonely nights of praying at Sora's shrine in desperation. She understood how Kurosaki-kun felt, that endless wishful denial...

Oh.

"Maybe Nii-chan thinks that putting you in Karin-chan's place will stop him from searching for her like he did last time... It's okay," mumbled Yuzu bravely; "I know where she really is." _A place worse than death._ Inoue noticed the little girl's hands becoming fists, and the tears threatening to fall despite her vow to be as stoic as her sister from now on. "But it's not fair, Nii-chan." A tiny wail, barely audible.

"GOOOOOD AFTERNOOOOOON, MY BELOVED CHILDREN AND BELOVED GUEST!"

Isshin saw Inoue's possessions invading Karin's hallowed half of the room, and pulled up short.

"A-bu-b-Kurosaki-san! I'm sorry, Kurosaki-kun just left my things here but I'll move them immediately, I was just asking Kurosaki-chan where-" babbled Orihime in panic.

Isshin's expression turned ugly. "YOU INFURIATE ME!"

"Wahaah! I'm so sorry, Kurosaki-san!"

"CALL US BY OUR FIRST NAMES, DAMN IT! Honestly, I hate having to wait five syllables just to figure out who you're talking about in the first place! Yuzu-chan! Don't feed her any dinner until she changes her evil ways."

"Roger!"

"Uh...huh?"

Inoue was just starting to realise why Kurosa-…Ichigo-kun called his family insane.

**o)0(o**

They were surrounding him. People he knew vaguely from school, who in his absence had evolved from fading into the background-types to carrying the threatening demeanour of a gang. Strutting confidence and dangerous smiles.

"We've got a real freak here," jeered one of them. Sado Yasutora was no stranger to such comments, and so said nothing, just adjusted the grip of his shopping bags.

"Did you get stabbed by a Hollow and steal its powers? Like your friend Kurosaki…"

Chad blinked. This was rather unexpected. He opened his mouth to explain to them that he had no zanpakuto like the shinigami did, as denial was clearly pointless. He would even go on to admit that his powers had grown much, much stronger in the warped ambient reiatsu of Hueco Mundo - but then he realised that might mean nothing to them, so perhaps he should answer with a simple 'no'.

His inquisitioner had grown impatient and continued before the part-Mexican could speak. "It'd be easier to hunt the Hollows than the reapers."

Yasutora stared at the gang in disbelief. What on earth were they after? Was this yet another tribe or cult trying to destroy Soul Society? A gang wanting to raze Karakura to the ground? More Quincies, Bounto; rogue death gods? He couldn't sense a whit of reiatsu from any of them, yet that could as easily mean they had perfectly hidden their powers as that they had none.

Best to stay out of this and go warn the others.

"…"

They watched him leave.

"I swear that guy is mute."

**o)0(o**

"So the Soutaicho is going to rent Inoue's apartment? Why?"

"So that he can keep the huge computer there. He would hate to rely on Urahara as his real-world base of operations. He never set one up before because Karakura is so close to the heart of Soul Society, geographically."

Ichigo took onboard Renji's explanation and hummed. Renji rather agreed with the idea of not depending on someone so stingy as Urahara, and ignored Ichigo when the teenager deemed it a waste of resources.

"And everyone got promoted..."

"Don't tell Nii-sama," commanded Rukia instantly. Her life was on the line. She didn't want to see that man angry.

"I know! You've told me ten times already! But I'm surprised; you all seem like a risky bunch to be captain."

"So are all the other captains," said Abarai defensively. "They're all nutjobs. No one normal gets that close to their zanpakuto."

"You're including yourself, Renji?" grinned Rukia.

"Ichigo has bankai too, and no one's calling _him_ reliable or sane."

"Oi. It sounds like you want me to kick your ass again, pineapple head."

"Well, I would fight you, but I am busy with my _taicho duties_, Substitute."

"So, the only normal captain in the Gotei is Unohana?" asked Ichigo, changing the subject before his friends could gloat any further.

Renji thought back to that arrancar-melting breath Retsu's zanpakuto had demonstrated, and his expression soured. But it was Rukia who replied first.

"Unohana-taicho is fifteen-hundred years old, and she was around before the Academy. Don't assume anything. She knows everyone's secrets, and she's strict. About a decade ago she put me in quarantine for a _year_ because I fought a contagious Hollow." The tiny woman shuddered. Although it was hazy and old, the memory still left her feeling queasy.

"And does that pass on to Isane? Because I kinda beat her in two seconds, I'm surprised she has bankai." His face reflected his scepticism.

"Most of the shinigami you met that time were trying to save Rukia too, dumbass."

"…oh."

"Well, we'd better help set up the base," yawned Renji, rolling his shoulders and moving off in the direction of a senkai gate and Inoue's former home. Ichigo suddenly smacked his palm.

"Rukia! If you're going back to school with us tomorrow, then you should probably come round tonight for revision." He winced just thinking about it, but some things had to be done.

"Ahahaha, no," giggled Rukia in her most falsetto voice; an elegant hand hiding her mouth. "Whatever couldst thou be inferring-eth, I can't go back to school now, fukutaicho duties!" She sprinted away in Renji's wake. "Byeee sucker!"

**o)0(o**

Whilst Ichigo was reporting back to Soul Society yet again, Kon was skipping down the road, enjoying his new-found freedom. During the Hueco Mundo rescue mission he'd had to hide in the Urahara Shouten all the time, and were they ever good at inventing useless jobs for freeloaders...

Suddenly something warm embraced him from behind, his perv-dar identifying it as a high school girl. Kon melted into a blissful state. It must be his lucky day, a girl had decided to confess to Ichigo!

Her fist punched into his stomach and heaved up into his diaphragm. For one delicious second the girl's chest was pressed against his back, and then his consciousness shrank to the size of a pea as the soul candy went flying out of his throat.

"And that," he dimly heard the girl say; "is what we call the Heimlich Manoeuvre."

**o)0(o**

"Iiiiiiiichi-GO!"

Keigo was approaching from a long way away, yet the speed at which he moved would rival even Yoruichi.

"Hey Ichigo," murmured Tatsuki in a slow, deliciously dangerous voice.

"Hn?" grunted he, already calculating the angle, speed and force of his Anti-Keigo Defence Punch.

"Haven't you ever been curious what would happen if you let him glomp you?"

The death god stared at her in wide-eyed fear. "Are you mad?" he asked hoarsely.

"I _dare_ you," she purred, twitching her eyebrows. "It can't be worse than fighting Hollows?"

Ichigo snorted at that, because he wouldn't put it past Keigo to be that annoying; but if it was a _dare_…

It had more in common with the hybrid child of a rugby tackle and a sonic boom than any manner of human hug. This must be how it felt to be hit by a jet-powered Optimus Prime travelling at Mach 3, juggernauting the two of them down the corridor at head height.

Several metres of blood-curdling screams later, they collided with a convenient wall.

Ichigo picked shattered plaster out of his hair, and shoved his 'friend' off. "If you ever, _ever_ try to do that to me again," he growled, and Keigo trembled in the face of the rage that could crush arrancars and defeat captains; "I _swear_ I'll sic my inner Hollow on you!"

Keigo squeaked in agreement, fleeing to the safety of the classroom.

)o(

Despite having invited all his friends around for cramming, or perhaps because of it, the massive revision session had been highly unsuccessful. It wasn't that Ichigo hadn't applied himself – he'd been strangely eager to bury himself in mundane sums and grammar and chemical reactions last night. But there just wasn't enough time to play catch up on everything he'd missed.

As the pressure grew heavier and heavier, Ichigo folded. He looked at the pill in his hand. He'd intended to last longer than ten minutes before resorting to this, but there was nothing for it.

Ichigo knocked back the gikon, and popped out of his body with an inaudible _bang!_

The false soul now occupying his physical self sat quietly and waited for instructions. Ichigo hadn't been able to find Kon, so had turned to Nova as a far calmer and more reliable substitute.

You could not be much more obvious than a tall ginger guy in a bulky shihakusho, holding a near enough two-metre sword in the middle of a quietly studious classroom. But that was one of the joys of being a ghost.

You could get away with _anything_.

Creeping down the aisle of desks, Ichigo tried to peer at Ishida's answers. The Quincy glared evilly and covered his paper with an arm. Sighing and flicking some pens off his 'friendly' rival's desk (purely so that Uryuu would be blamed for the loud clatter), the shinigami wandered over to Inoue instead.

"Did you revise enough?" he whispered. She nodded slightly and obligingly showed him her answers, which he began to reel off for Nova to write down.

At the back of the class, Keigo glanced around with suspicion, and once he had confirmed that no one outside their group had noticed Ichigo cheating, happily jumped on the bandwagon. Take that, top ten! Asano-sama would show them all!

And indeed, when their teacher read out the scores with a tone of astonishment, every single friend of Kurosaki had the same score, besides Ishida who topped the class as usual. Plus one other.

"Here's a shock result," muttered their tutor. "Asano and Mitsubishi also made the top ten. Would you all like to share your incredible cheating technique?"

"Group revision," said Ichigo with a perfectly straight face, now returned to his body. "Everyone studied round my house at the weekend."

"Then you're a better teacher than me, because Asano has been bombing this topic all term. Ah well. Like I care. Dismissed!"

**o)0(o**

"We've come to recruit you, Kurosaki." The familiar words were announced in a smug voice with sinister undertones. He'd been cornered in an alleyway close to his home.

There were at least ten of them, each with a deadly, condescending sneer.

"It'll go easier on you if you cooperate, shinigami."

The ring of strangers tightened claustrophobically.

"…What, no explosions?" asked Ichigo in the flattest voice imaginable. "No evil laughter, no shunpo, no deadly reiatsu, no innocuous stripy hat?"

"…huh?"

"Sorry, guys, but I've seen scarier entrances from five-year-olds." _Yachiru in particular was terrifying, because Yachiru equalled Zaraki equalled Pain._

The members of the cult staggered back in shock. "Don't be so hasty, Kurosaki!" chided their ringleader, recovering quickly. "You don't know what you're dealing with!"

The redhead turned to him with a deadpan expression that could crush the most overinflated of egos. "See, Mitsubishi, intimidation worked for Vaizards in school uniforms; but you live three houses away from me and I've known you since you were two and ate mud pies."

His neighbour's lip curled. "Knowing the devil doesn't necessarily make him safer."

Ichigo blinked and thought of his inner Hollow. "Point."

Mitsubishi yawned and turned away. "Fine, forget it. Nail him."

Four of them piled onto his back before he could react, and as Ichigo tumbled to the ground under their weight he sent a silent apology to his father for the unusual lack of counterattacks. He kept forgetting how slow and limited his human body was.

However, the assailants were amateurs, and weak with it, so no doubt he'd mop the floor with them in the next five minutes. Or so he thought, until they forced something into his mouth.

His soul lurched.

)o(

Kon groaned and sat up, rubbing his now-human back. "Kon-sama has a lion-sized bruise. You guys are harsh. I shall forgive you only if you throw me an orgy-"

"Shut up," said every person in the alleyway simultaneously.

"And eat these," added the girl who had Heimlich-ed him earlier, handing him some sweets. Kon was instantly mollified and gulped them down.

"Kon," drawled Ichigo; "don't take sweets from strangers. Run back to the Clinic, would you? I'll sort these guys out." He hefted Zangetsu with a vicious smile of his own.

Mistubishi laughed. "Somehow, I don't believe you're allowed to kill normal Plus souls like us."

Ichigo let go of his zanpakuto's hilt and punched the nearest person instead. "Mildly injuring is fine…huh?"

The one he had hit wasn't even looking at him. And there had been no response from his fists, no impact. The other teenager was oblivious to the ghostly hand suddenly sticking straight through his brain.

There were _bricks_ with more reiatsu than these guys.

More than a little thrown by this gang that was miraculously impervious to him, Ichigo turned to the only one able to see him. Mitsubishi.

"What do you idiots want, anyway?"

The boy grinned. "We want to be like you, Kurosaki."

_Blink_. "You mean…bull-headed, ginger, and undead?"

"No," scoffed his neighbour. "We want to steal the powers of the shinigami just like you did the night a 'truck' crashed into your house. I saw it all. The monster, the reaper; the transfer of power. It's clearly the fusion of living and dead energies that make you so powerful – and that's simple enough for anyone to achieve."

The part-time reaper opened his mouth to argue, but then paused. Maybe that _did_ explain his insane speed of spiritual growth. Mitsubishi took full advantage of the silence.

"We call ourselves the Cult of Prometheus," he informed Ichigo, still with that insane, unfounded confidence.

"He's the guy that stole fire from the Gods."

)o(

Minutes later, they were still arguing. "Listen, the truth is, transferring power is not gonna work on you."

"Why not?" The ringleader's stare was piercing.

"Because..." Mind whirling, trying in a panic to pick out one decent excuse from the hoard of idiotic ones appearing in his head. "_Because_... This is a secret you absolutely must not break, alright?" hissed Ichigo, just to buy time. _Aha! That might work._

"I didn't die when Rukia stabbed me because I already had reaper blood and death god powers. The truth is..."

He waited with bated breath, inching closer as the doctor's son paused dramatically.

"My mother was a shinigami."

Mitsubishi laughed like he just couldn't help himself.

"…Nice try. But no, I think you're talking crap and we'll be borrowing your abilities very soon now. When all of us have hybrid powers like yours, those ghost-worlds will be free for the taking."

There was stupid, and then there was suicidal. The strawberry shinigami made a dive for his body, where Kon was uselessly rolling around on the ground as per usual. The sooner he could beat some sense into these deluded crack-heads, the better.

He managed to force an arm and a leg into the physical shell, and nobody tried to stop him. The rest of his spirit followed quickly, and a rush of wooziness made him stumble. Completely reconnected, Ichigo tried to stand and fight.

When did Mitsu-whatsissface take Zangetsu?

The soft lights gleaming off the dark swoop of its blade were kind of hypnotic…

_And Kon really shouldn't have taken sweets from strangers._

Mitsubishi watched Ichigo keel sideways in a drug-induced trance. He ran one hand down the bandaged hilt of the guardless sword.

"Thanks for lending me your zanpakuto, Kurosaki…"

His smirk had an eerie twist, yet Ichigo was too far gone to see it seal his fate.

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup!_

**o)0(o**

Zangetsu: Listen to me very carefully, Ichigo! This situation is easy to escape. All you need to do is exit your body by taking Nova's gikon pill that is still in your pocket, and then summon me to your hand as you did at our first meeting! Do not hesitate! No retreat!  
Ichigo: The rats are talking again, aren't they? Why is the catnip trying to chew my foot off…  
Hichigo: Why has the sky in here gone rainbow-coloured?  
Ichigo: *gasp* HEY! ZAN-CHAN! LET ME TRY YOUR SHADES ON!  
Zangetsu: …I'm doomed.

**o)0(o**

Ichigo: "MY MOTHER WAS A SHINIGAMI!"  
Isshin: *face/palm* Genius…  
Kon: Trust him to pick the _wrong_ parent…

**o)0(o**

_**Chapter notes:**__ Prometheus was indeed the Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to the mortals, and yes, Ichigo's cultist neighbour is named after a car. Ichigo's secret love of Shakespeare is something Kubo came up with himself, and Inoue's poster quotation comes from Ethel Barrymore, an American actress. I liked it. = )_

_The low-reiatsu-equals-ghost-effect idea is not canon, as far as I know. I used it with Yuzu at the beginning of this arc and later realised that the best defence mortals had against shinigami was the holy power of 'Can't Touch This! Dananana, na na, nana!'_

_It struck me one day that stealing a shinigami's powers was dangerously easy with the right approach…so enjoy! And sorry for the month's delay, I got lynched by writer's block._

_Alliriyan~*_


	21. Damsel in Distress

**Hell Butterfly**

**Damsel in Distress**

**~21~**

**o)0(o**

The large blank screen fizzed into life, overflowing with a close-up of Matsumoto Rangiku's cheery face.

"Yo, Soutaicho-sama! The setting up of the new Karakura HQ is going well, bar the nosy human landlord! How is your day going?"

He leaned back a little, warding off the lieutenant's enthusiasm. "The situation here remains stable," he replied stiffly.

"Great. Well we've just figured out a way to run this outpost without paperwork," – was it his imagination, or did a muttered 'hallelujah' escape Hitsugaya-taicho's mouth? – "so all future reports will reach you via email or hell butterfly."

Yamamoto grunted in response to this. "Has there been any untoward activity on your side?"

A vast hand obscured his subordinate as she hid her giggles behind her fingertips and completely blocked the camera. "Actually, Ichigo-"

_Bzzzt-shaaa-aaa_

"-kidnapped…"

_Skrrr-rr-r- -_

"-a shinigami and now he's trapped in a basement and won't contact us at all so we're quite concerned over his condition –"

_Fzzt!_

Matsumoto trailed off in her explanation that Ichigo was endangered but they were waiting for his friends to step in due to the presence of ordinary living humans. She frowned slightly, and punched the colossal computer so hard that imprints of her knuckles were left in the dented metal casing.

The machine whined in protest and promptly flashed up the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.

"MATSUMOTO! You're making it worse!" barked Hitsugaya, livid.

Her face was suddenly painted with black shadows of vengeance. "It shouldn't have crossed me."

"Could you stop being so bipolar and behave like a rational adult? I shouldn't have to tell you this!"

She turned and hauled him way up to her eye level by his white haori. "Are you crossing me?"

Navigating her temper had recently become like tap-dancing across a minefield – blindfolded. But then, he wasn't a captain for no reason.

"Are you crossing me?" hissed Toushiro straight back, as the room temperature plummeted to subzero.

At that moment, the shinigami currently on duty in Karakura staggered in through the doorway, looking distraught and dishevelled out of uniform. "Big trouble, taicho," Zennosuke croaked. "I - I need back-up and medical attention immediately!"

The two officers of the Tenth Squad glared at him in terrifying unison, still frozen at each other's throats. "OUT!"

**o)0(o**

Ishida skidded into the living room at the Kurosaki Clinic, school tie streaming behind him for lack of a Quincy cape.

"Ichigo's been kidnapped!" he shouted.

The jaw of every person in the room dropped in shock.

"Really?" gasped Inoue, hands drifting up to her face where they clenched into fists. Rukia's expression was beginning to grow strangled rather than fearful, and she burst into floods of laughter around the same moment that Orihime punched the air with a cry of victory.

"YAY!"

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Ishida and Chad directed deadpan stares at the two women. "Is that really fitting?"

They were unrepentant.

"Oh the glorious irony, aaahahahaha!"

"LET'S GO SAVE HIM! This is awesome, we can pay him back Rukia-chan! We'll be knights in shining armour, and he can be a princess, and we'll invade Hueco Mundo!"

Rather thrown, Ishida adjusted his glasses in the hopes they would bring clarity to the situation. "...um, Inoue?"

The short shinigami was rolling around on the floor of the sitting room, clutching her sides as they split with hilarity. Orihime, on the other hand, seemed to be drawing up an invasion plan and chewing a pen lid in her concentration. "We have time to make some armour, right? Where are we rescuing him from? If we're in a rush, I'll just make some out of cardboard boxes, I'll be really quick!"

"...Look, he's only being held a couple of houses away..."

"Ichigo is really pathetic at being kidnapped, isn't he?" snorted Rukia. "At least we got taken by captains and Espada."

"That's not very appropriate, Rukia-san!"

Chad unfolded his arms and slowly shifted into a more alert stance that could be taken as his attack pose. A suggestion lurched out of his long fringe. "...We should go now..."

Paper and scissors and sticky tape were flying in all directions. "Okay Sado-kun, just give me one more minute to finish Ichigo-kun's princess hat, okay?"

Uryuu coughed, the temptation overwhelming him as he glanced about the room to spot Yuzu's sewing kit, old bed linen from the clinic and a sparkling, mesmerising packet of sequins. "...You know, I could whip up a damsel-in-distress dress before we head over there to save him..."

**o)0(o**

Ichigo was feeling happy. Quite astonishingly, breezily happy, as if he'd been drenched in pure joy. Whatever was making him this buoyant was a mystery, though he suspected it was the sparkling green LED that blinked at him in the darkness. On. Off. On. Off. It winked at him like it was sharing a fun secret.

He couldn't quite catch his balance to stand up, and he wasn't in the mood to chase his balance around the room until it stood still long enough for him to grab it. There were some cheap blue nylon ropes tying him to his chair, however, so at least he wouldn't fall off it. That was quite considerate of them.

Right now, he didn't have a care in the world. So what if his head was full of giddy rainbows and there were a couple of pissed-off voices in the back of his mind yelling at him to get a grip and get out of there? Get out of where?

It was...it was his neighbour's house...maybe. Anyway, there was no danger here; he'd been vague friends with Mizzubisshle for years.

Ichigo couldn't remember ever being this relaxed, not that he could recall anything that might have made him feel lower than this high. Life was simple, right? His thoughts meandered and tripped over the secrets of the cosmos. They were all hidden in that light. On. Off. On. Off.

And now he was hallucinating that the Soutaicho had skipped down the steps and come to join him. Ichigo laughed. Whatever was going on, it made no sense, so he was just going to assume this was Orihime's random train of thought becoming contagious...

Hey! That green speck had vanished! ...Oh no, there it was. Safe and sound - ah! It was gone again!

The drugged teenager frowned, and decided he didn't like the green blob anymore...

Come to think of it...what was green?

**o)0(o**

With the impromptu ball gown stuffed into his satchel, and Inoue hiding the conical princess hat behind her back, Uryuu analysed the front of the neighbour's house with his two human friends backing him up. Rukia had declared the rescue a piece of cake, added that they really didn't really need a babysitter anymore and shunpoed away to report at the new Karakura HQ.

It was surpassingly normal. Double-glazing, window boxes heavy with blooming flowers, a few weak red spirit threads hazing through the front door…

"Well, I think this calls for destruction of property…"

"Ah…actually Ishida-kun, there's a policeman hanging around the clinic…and if I got caught trashing someone's house they'd involve my family…" Yes, she'd stood up to Aizen however briefly, but the common man of the law could still strike fear into the heart of any teenager.

Chad looked down from his great height, and mumbled in agreement. "Extradited…"

"Come to think of it, a medical student can't have a criminal record…" Ishida fidgeted with his Quincy bracelet whilst he thought of an alternative. "We will have to negotiate."

He pushed the doorbell, hiding his slight trepidation towards this unmeasured enemy.

The door creaked open a few moments later, and someone from their year group at school peered suspiciously through the gap. "No," he said in a pre-emptively flat voice, moving to shut it again.

Chad leaned one palm against the door, and it had much the same effect as jamming a boulder in the gap. "We're here to talk."

Flustered, but hiding it with skill, Mitsubishi let the front door swing in the breeze and leaned casually against the jamb with his arms folded. "So…you can speak after all, 'Sado'."

"…"

"We want Ichigo-kun back!" snapped Inoue immediately.

"Oh?" asked the student, staring at the dirt under his fingernails as if it was more interesting than the Quincy, the giant and the fairy-wielder that had just landed on his doorstep. "And what can you do about it?"

"I could slice you and your house in half," replied the girl quite frankly, eyes wide.

"Just tell us what you're after so that we can negotiate," interrupted Ishida in terse tones, gagging Inoue before she could put her foot in her mouth. Mitsubishi whistled and smiled.

"The aims of the Cult of Prometheus…well, everything, really. I know all about what's been happening in Karakura and Soul Society, you see. Ghosts don't bother to lower their voices around humans who 'can't hear them anyway'. I witnessed Kuchiki give her shinigami powers to Kurosaki, and I saw how fast he grew in ability. It was phenomenal. That enormous Hollow in the black cloak, with the long nose and the pointy boots and the Cero? I saw you both defeat that, Quincy. And most of all I've watched the fear and surprise growing on the faces of the reapers around Kurosaki, every time he pushes the limits to a new boundary."

His audience tried not to yawn. If the Gillian was still big news then this guy was way behind on their activities.

"So it's been obvious to me all along that this fusion of the living and the dead is what gives Kurosaki his unprecedented strength. Unless you have a better reason?"

Uryuu and Orihime glanced at each other, mystified, while Sado just shrugged. To be honest, that was the best explanation they had heard as well, beyond Ichigo's Inner Hollow.

The cult's ringleader smirked. "Now imagine if a whole group of humans was that strong. We could demand what we wanted of the world, and the world would have to submit. Imagine how it would be right at the top…"

"Cold," chirped Inoue, answering literally. "And penguin-y."

"You've taken this farce too far," growled Ishida, gagging his friend again. "You have no strength with which to back up your ambitions, so quit this ludicrous attempt peacefully before Soul Society and Hueco Mundo tear you apart. This is suicidal."

"We're not doing so badly," retorted Mitsubishi. His eyes were innocent, above a cold smirk. "We've already got your strongest fighter, and you won't be trying anything with a policeman so close. I wonder who tipped him off?"

The Quincy, who knew personally the consequences of such reckless attack against the world of the dead, gritted his teeth and prepared to betray his conscience to the utmost. "Would you really like me to call out the Thirteen Squads to deal with you?" His fingers itched to form bow and arrow. Humanity was making everything ridiculously complicated.

Contrary to expectations, their enemy relaxed completely. "They wouldn't dare do anything. We've already captured their leader."

"…Care to repeat that?"

"Really buff old dude, huge long beard with a ribbon on it?" Mitsubishi grinned. "He's at our mercy."

The rescue party blinked as one.

"Shit."

**o)0(o**

"Who was that at the door, Yoruichi?" asked Urahara, poking his head out of the lab where he was conducting the usual dangerous and only vaguely ethical experiments. "It was the Soutaicho," she said with mild surprise. "He wanted to borrow a gigai." The scientist snorted with laughter. "Pull the other one."

She transformed into a cat for a few moments, so she could have a good stretch. Only a feline's spine could catch every crick with so little effort. "No, really. He charged in here yelling about Ichigo betraying him and humans and cults and something with less reiatsu than a brick and how nothing was working and demanded a gigai and then charged off again." Her back went snap, crackle, pop! "I gave him the first one to hand."

Instinct, or perhaps a long acquaintance with Sod's Law, made Urahara double-check the rack of customisable gigai across the room from the Shihouin heir. His face went white.

"You gave him the upgraded version of Rukia's humanising gigai that seals all spiritual power in about five minutes. In effect he's going to be a doddering old fogey by the time he reaches his target." Kisuke's voice was curiously blank.

"It was the first one to hand," replied the cat innocently. Silence fell as they eyed each other.

"This is why I love you," cooed Urahara, disappearing back into his workshop with a cackle of long-awaited revenge.

**o)0(o**

Yamamoto pounded his wooden staff against the basement door pitifully. "I'll give you…the beating…of your life!" he wheezed. He really wished he'd brought a soul candy for getting out of this damn thing. It was a good thing he'd exiled Urahara if dangerous objects like this were all he created these days – although this might be personal payback.

He glared at Ichigo from beneath his long straggly eyebrows. At least this disproved Matsumoto's report that the substitute had betrayed them for a human cult. However the truth was hardly more comforting. The idiot brat was tied to a chair he could break with his little finger and muttering about some green thing not being his friend anymore.

Locating the flashing light, the Soutaicho of Soul Society wondered what an X-Box was, and slowly froze as it occurred to him that it might be a bomb…

In the silence heated voices began to filter through the thin walls and ceiling.

**o)0(o**

"The soul reapers will kill you!"

Mtsubishi shrugged, hands in pockets. "Makes no difference to me."

"You may not care what happens to yourself, but are you going to drag all your friends down with you? When the Gotei are erasing their enemies, they are indiscriminate."

"You're still alive aren't you? Didn't they kill you?"

"They tried." There was steel in Ishida's solemn gaze. "They succeeded with the entirety of the rest of my family. Every Quincy got hauled off and experimented on and tortured. Is that what you want?"

"I'll be too strong for them."

Chad couldn't hide a spurt of laughter, uncommon as it was for him. The only thing that had protected the cult so far, as much as reports could indicate, was their utter weakness to begin with.

"But what about your family, Mitsubishi-san?" asked Orihime, beseeching.

"It's got nothing to do with them."

"Aah, naive..." sighed the girl, and what a low blow it was to be called naive by someone as innocent and gullible as Inoue appeared to be. "Soul Society might not stoop that low, but you're forgetting about Hueco Mundo. It's a vast dimension full of bloodthirsty monsters. They kidnapped me. They killed Ichigo. They're fast and merciless; they can fit a thousand killing blows into ten seconds. D you really think you can handle that?"

"Uh..."

"And did you think that Ichigo-kun's little sister died of natural causes?"

"Karin?" Mitsubishi seemed thrown. "I heard she hit her head and had a heart failure!"

"Oh yes," said Inoue coldly. "She hit her head on an Espada and failed to have a heart anymore after it was ripped out of her soul. They'll turn your siblings into monsters and send them out to hunt you down and kill you. And you will die. And don't expect me to bring you back."

"Like you could!" scoffed the boy, latching onto the only part of her speech he thought he could understand.

"Tsubaki!"

The widescreen television in the living room was gouged into two halves.

"Shun'ou, Ayame!"

In a pool of tangerine light, the plastic and metal was swiftly reconstructed.

Mitsubishi looked rather white.

"I can do that to people too."

Mitsubishi sat down shakily. "Please...if that breaks my dad will _kill_ me."

"Ichigo was torn to shreds and dead for two or three days," rumbled Sado Yasutora, deep voice forbidding. "A broken television is hardly on the same scale."

"You don't have the nerve to stand and fight in this war," hissed the last Quincy. "So don't you _dare_ get in the way of those who do."

**o)0(o**

The leader of the Cult of Prometheus may have been disturbed by this, but he wasn't the only one whose opinion was being swayed. The entire parley had sifted into the basement. It was sobering.

The Soutaicho stared gravely at his unique substitute shinigami, who always acted without regard for him, as some kind of misguided freelance hero.

Ichigo was all of sixteen years old now, taking the world's responsibilities onto his shoulders and calling himself a man; but to the patriarch of Soul Society he might as well have been a baby.

Weak, and helpless, and crying as he could no longer maintain his state of denial with such damning words falling from above, he was locked in a vulnerable state by the Cult's poisons.

Yamamoto Genryuusai-Shigekuni, founder of Seireitei and leader of all shinigami for the past two millennia, who had seen the rise and fall of countless rebellions against the justice and order he pursued; who had witnessed the commitment and sacrifice of fighters beyond number under his responsibility, and whose heart had grown protective callouses accordingly; stared at this tiny child who was only the latest in a long, weary line.

And his nature softened a little towards that accidentally-on-purpose vaizard.

"It must have already dawned on you that this path of battle never ends, even though that peace is all we strive for."

Ichigo looked up at the gravelly words hewn from time and experience.

"I know that you have never backed down whether you were running in the wrong direction or the right."

The fog was beginning to recede from Kurosaki's bewildered mind.

"I will not unjustly distrust you again, shinigami!"

The substitute gaped. "Am I still hallucinating?" He shook his head, groaned. "What the HELL are you doing here?"

Yamamoto frowned. "I came here to destroy you for betraying my Court of Pure Souls for a petty cult!"

"Not you, Sou-chan, I know you're not real," sniggered the boy, flapping his bound hand dismissively. "I mean why is Kyoraku-taicho popping up out of the darkness over there?"

The Soutaicho turned, and Shunsui was indeed unravelling himself from the black shadows in the corner of the dim room.

"Yo!" he saluted cheerfully, doffing a red-tasselled falchion to his wide woven hat. "Would you two like a lift out of here?"

**o)0(o**

They all felt them arrive, that steady rise in the background hum of reiatsu .

"We're surrounded," whimpered Mitsubishi, peering out the living room windows.

"Oh! Ichigo-kun has moved outside!" said Inoue in surprise, without looking to check. Chad asked how she could tell.

"I can smell it," the girl confided, tapping her nose.

As they discussed how Kurosaki might have teleported out of the basement, the ringleader called the other members of his cult down from where they were plotting nefariously in his bedroom. "Guys, they've come out in full force, we have to retreat!" His followers joined him in peeking through the curtains.

"I don't see anything," they complained as one.

"Just trust me on this, there's over twenty top-class soul reapers out there. Listen - you guys escape, and I'll hold them off!"

"But what about you, Mitsubishi?" cried the loyal disciples.

"Go!" he bellowed dramatically. "The back door! To the Cultmobile!"

"I told you not to call my car that," huffed his older sister, tapping her keys against her arm.

"Will you be alright?" quavered a classmate, as Ishida, Sado and Inoue simply rolled their eyes at the melodrama. Hence they missed Mitsubishi dragging Zangetsu out from beneath a sofa and pulling a small green pill from his pocket. Also known as Kon.

"I'll be fine," he grinned with confidence, pausing only to crank up the volume of a CD player in the corner of the lounge. "I'm gonna go Halo 2 on their asses!"

He hit play, and swallowed the soul candy.

**o)0(o**

The full array of captains and vices waiting patiently out in the street greeted Kyoraku with casual waves as he materialised from the shade beneath a tree with his passengers intact. To any normal passer-by it appeared deserted, but on the spiritual side things were getting rather crowded.

The Soutaicho leaned against his staff and allowed his power to pour out, gushing through his false body at such magnitude that it caused the energy-sapping technology in the gigai to short-circuit. The flare completely masked the thin plume of foreign reiatsu drifting up from the suburban house behind him.

In no time at all the prototype gigai exploded, scattering charred lumps of synthetic flesh all across the pavement.

"The exile Urahara Kisuke has not yet made the cage that can entrap _me_," dismissed their leader in his old, gnarled voice.

A few of his best soldiers cheered inappropriately. In the silence that followed, music could be heard blaring from the open windows of Mistubishi's home.

_If you wanna see some action! Got to be the centre of attraction!_

Backed by the swooping howls of manic guitars, the singer pelted out her lyrics with pride.

_Now you feel like Number One, shining like the midday sun! Living out your fantasy, the brightest star for all to seeeeee~!_

The front door crashed open and the cult-leader sprang forth, black robes streaming, and the dark sweep of Zangetsu's cleaver blade gleaming slickly under the bright sunlight.

"…KAME HAME HAAA-AAA-AAA-AAA-AAA!"

A sliver of blue light wobbled towards the legions of the dead, fizzling out an inch away from their eyes.

Someone coughed awkwardly.

"Dude, I've seen Don Kanonji do better than that," slurred Ichigo disdainfully.

Mitsubishi skidded to a halt in front of near-enough thirty expert shinigami officers, panting from exertion, struggling to even lift the wickedly sharp zanpakuto that was meant to make him so strong. Some of them had started arguing amongst themselves in whispers, utterly unfazed by his assault.

_We have to defeat her Sentaro! Before she steals Ukitake-taicho away from us forever!_

_Fine! I will make a truce with you for now, Kiyone. But know that as soon as Rukia is out of the way, I shall once more be Jyuushiro-taicho's greatest subordinate!_

_Ha! We'll just see about that!_

Bewildered by his opponents' blank and disinterested faces, the human-turned-rogue-shinigami began to shiver and edge back without even intending to. Pressure was pushing him away without a single finger being raised against him.

As his sister's car swerved out of the driveway and catapulted down the street, running over several captains in its path if only they weren't intangible; Mitsubishi started to feel terribly alone. He'd been stupid.

They'd warned him. The Quincy had said he'd be killed for his transgressions, and judging by the murderous look on the old man's face, the Quincy had told the exact truth.

He'd shrugged it off with the knowledge that he was already technically deceased, after stealing a reaper's powers; but for the first time he thought to wonder whether he could die twice.

"Him!" shouted a strange man in white robes. The teenager winced as he recognised this as the afro-shinigami he had captured first in his mission to imitate his neighbour's prodigious strength.

"Soutaicho-sama! I am Kurumadani Zennosuke, the shinigami currently on patrol duty in Karakura town! That human took my powers from me by force!" The low-ranking death god, not that he would admit it; gesticulated madly. No one would be happy about a portion of their soul being ripped out by a noob.

Rukia glanced at Ichigo and then looked away from the scene, whistling guiltily. In a way this was her fault, albeit for doing the morally right thing. It is a terrible thing to set a precedent.

Mitsubishi squeaked and hid behind Zangetsu, attempting to avoid the terrifying patriarch of the dead as he loomed over the ringleader of Prometheus. "W-what went wrong?" he shouted towards Kurosaki; "Is your mother really a shinigami?"

Still swaying slightly, Ichigo was facing the opposite direction when he answered. "N…nope! Haa! I'm just awesome…like Goku…"

Like a red stamp of rejection, crimson flames raced across the pavement into a deadly square that caged Mitsubishi on all sides. Yamamoto's judgement instantly cancelled out all other inane conversations, his steel gauntlet had finally been thrown. The ancient master of the other side struck the base of his staff against the ground and it clashed with the ringing sound of hidden metal. Its true identity: Ryuujin Jakka.

"I have no respect for you," he meted out in a dark voice. "Nor time, nor sympathy, nor patience. For what reason does a feckless worm sabotage the work of eagles; when they are already engaged in war!"

The last member of the Cult of Prometheus made no attempt to go down gracefully with his sinking ship of a rebellion. Zangetsu slipped from his weak grip and clattered sideways, he raised his arms above his head in instinctive defence.

"I-I know about the war! I've seen them! I've seen all of those monsters, and they terrified me! Have you ever been alive; do you even remember how it feels to be this weak and left to die in the background of dead men's battles? I-I-I wanted to be able to protect myself, because we're like gnats to them!"

"You may cast your fear aside." His voice slowly building to a roar, the Commander-General simultaneously cast his arms wide to exhibit all of his proud and powerful officers. "Our sole purpose in the afterlife is to protect you. But I will never suffer my shinigamis to be in danger from those they protect!" The fires rushed skywards.

Struggling for oxygen, Mitsubishi crumpled to the floor, subservient and beaten.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll never do it again, I swear!" he gasped, as the flames flickered out.

"You won't be able to do it again," was the Soutaicho's final forbidding statement. He nodded to two captains, delegating the matter of removing the boy's spiritual powers to them.

As the chosen pair stepped forwards, every other shinigami present took several massive steps backwards, gulping in horror at such an unholy combination. The music still echoing from house's windows suddenly changed to creeping, chilling reverberations.

"Kurumadani, you will be under the care of Unohana-taicho and Kurotsuchi-taicho until such time as your zanpakuto and powers are restored to you."

The former reaper cringed, and blanched outright white as Mayuri tapped his chin with an over-long nail and mused, "Hmmm, perhaps with a few modifications when we restore them…"

Unohana directed a calm, vicious gaze at her colleague that sent many of the more squeamish vice-captains fleeing for their lives. "Not whilst I hold seniority over you, Kurotsuchi-san;" she admonished softly.

Most of the people with survival instincts left at that point.

With the issue of the Cult of Prometheus now settled Ichigo staggered forwards to snatch back Zangetsu and hug the black sword to his chest.

As the commander and the two captains hauled Ichigo's neighbour through a senkai gate, Zennosuke trailing miserably in their wake; the eyes of the remaining shinigamis turned away, and took the time to examine their surroundings properly.

To whit, Kuchiki Byakuya's gaze fell upon Kuchiki Rukia, and the latter responded with a nervous, guilty smile.

"G-good afternoon, Nii-sama…"

"Rukia," he stated coolly; "this was an officers-only summons. It is time you learned to cease inviting yourself along upon the assignments of others."

Ukitake waved cheerfully. "Ah, Byakuya-san, Rukia-chan is in fact my new-"

But the noble had already spotted the badge adorning his sister's arm, and the razor blossoms of Senbonzakura were already dancing and shimmering in the air.

"You can't mollycoddle her forever, you know," sighed Jyuushiro, shrugging. "In fact, impeding her development in this way is only going against Hisana's dying wish that you look after her sister. Right?"

Silent, stony-faced, Byakuya unleashed a torrent of deadly pink sakura in his senpai's direction.

One instantaneous reaction later; and every last petal was entrapped in a glistening wall of ice.

Rukia twitched, hid Sode no Shirayuki behind her back and tried to pretend the glacier wasn't hers. In the back of her mind, a euphoric feeling was screaming.

_Holy shit, I just defeated Nii-sama! I am SO DEAD!_

At the far end of the perfectly normal suburban road, Kiyone and Sentaro peered around a corner and decided that their futile plan to destroy Rukia and regain their captain's full attention was inherently doomed.

After a shocked stretch of silence, Byakuya closed his hanging jaw and moved to counterattack. However, Ukitake leapt into action at that point, and a blink later the Kuchiki was alone.

"I think I need to hide for a while," suggested Rukia, temporarily safe in her taicho's arms as they flash-stepped far away.

"Agreed."

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup!_

**o)0(o**

_Knock, knock, knock!_

"Go away! I'm not coming out!"

_Rattatat-tat!_

"Tell your descendents to fetch me in two hundred years, when Nii-sama calms down! Until then, NO!"

"But Rukia-chan!" came a muffled voice through the layer of wood; "You're missing out!"

Rukia sighed, broke the kido seal locking the cupboard shut and slid Ichigo's closet door open. She was dressed in Yuzu's white pyjamas, surrounded by offerings of incense to appease evil spirits and held her hands together in a praying position.

She looked at the owner of said wardrobe, fell off her shelf in shock and started rolling on the floor again in yet another paroxysm of laughter.

Ichigo blinked down at her vapidly, scowl out in full force. Above the scowl was a fetching pink princess hat complete with long trailing gauze. Below the scowl was a ruffled, flouncy green dress stitched from old clinic bed sheets, with stylish ruches and a Quincy Cross embellishment picked out in large blue sequins. Tucked into the bodice was Ichigo-chan, his belovéd strawberry doll.

"Hello, shinigami."

His eye was twitching.

"I am a helpless damsel in distress."

Rukia felt like she was about to die from lack of air.

"Would you please rescue me?"

She died.

**o)0(o**

Rukia: What's Mitsubishi doing in your room?

Kon: Kon-sama is looking after his body until his soul is brought back!

Ichigo: About that…YOU LEFT MY BODY OUT IN THE STREET!

Kon: I was kidnapped too, ya know!

Ichigo: It got taken back to the clinic in an ambulance! They told my dad I was dead! Yuzu nearly had a nervous breakdown!

Kon: Yeah, yeah…you're just jealous that I got a hug!

Ichigo: You're a faulty product! I'm sending you back to Soul Society for dismantling!

Kon: NOOO!

**o)0(o**

_**Chapter notes:**__ Shout out to blueturtle/turtle chan in blue for Sentaro and Kiyone's evil subplot! And of course, the songs Mitsubishi plays are the background theme music for the anime. Kame hame haaa and Goku are from Dragonball Z as 99 percent of you will probably know, and I'm sure the Cultmobile is a Mitsubishi make._

_Updates should be faster from now on, as I'm slightly less busy and we're on to the awesome part._

_All reviews are loved and read many many times._


	22. Eclipse

**Hell Butterfly**

**Eclipse**

**~22~**

**o)0(o**

The sun was fierce, desiccating the loose earth and dying the skin of all the scattered street-rats burning reds and deep tan browns. She was sprawled on her back, too limp to find a shadier gutter and too preoccupied with the source-less gnawing in her small body to notice the heat.

Footsteps were scratching through the dusty soil, drawing ever nearer, but she made no attempt to move. If she was in anyone's path they could just kick her out of the way.

It would distract her from the constant ache if nothing else.

The footsteps paused, and it was only when a child's face blocked her view of the cloudless sky that she realised the noises had been small and close rather than large and far-off.

He was smiling; eyes squinted in the bright light like an albino fox. He must have a home or shelter to be that pale. He might even be rich and pampered, passing through Lower Rukongai on his way to those private estates out in the countryside.

She might have smiled back, if her lips were not so dry and cracked. Less a gesture of welcome, more a confirmation that she was still 'alive'.

Was he one of those that were born and buried in Soul Society, never knowing the material realm?

Her line of sight further reduced when he waved a soft and round something in her sunkissed face, the girl fussed and turned away.

"What?" snapped the urchin, with more energy than she could afford to spare. "Give it to one of the others!"

The smile flickered downwards for a second.

"Aw," moued the boy.

He remained there, hovering, and when she next panted for air in the heat, poked the steamed bun into her mouth quick as a flash.

It tasted disgusting, because all she could really taste was her own dehydration.

She spat it out, somehow, still with nary the twitch of a finger or attempt to shuffle away in her exhaustion.

"Annoy. Someone. Else." mumbled the charity-case venomously.

"But they're jus' hopeless," complained her unwelcome benefactor. "You're actually hungry."

Scowled.

"Huh?"

He grinned wider and readied another delicacy to force-feed her.

"Ghosts don't get hungry," she insisted. He gagged her with small, moist rice ball this time.

"But you are."

"Am not."

She swallowed the food and grimaced, she could feel it travelling down her parched throat. Not nice.

"You're starving. None of the others are that thin - they're just bored. What do you want next?"

"A drink," she said truthfully, and to spite him because it was clear he was carrying none.

The stranger stood up, looming against the blue sky with his slender child's frame. "Ah," he chirped. "In that case ah'll havta kidnap ya."

"That's a shame," replied the victim with a dry sarcasm beyond her years. "I was having so much fun here..."

It was awkward and uncomfortable when he peeled her from the patch of dirt she called home, he staggered under her slight weight yet seemed oddly strong for all that.

Ichimaru Gin began to sprint towards the outpost of the Shinigami Academy reserved for strays and brats who developed their spiritual powers early. Every jolting stride left Matsumoto Rangiku coughing, but the silvery boy just spoke to her soothingly.

"Hold on," he smiled, always smiling, and hiding his eyes away. "Just a lil' longer..."

**o)0(o**

Hitsugaya walked into his office, pulled up short, and marched straight back out again. That was definitely not his office. The place had been spotless. He looked around for a clue to his location: perhaps he'd wandered into Kuchiki-taicho's territory by accident, and could pretend to be there on business.

But no, the unmistakeable black cross of the Tenth Division, emblazoned above the door, was all he found.

Edging back into his headquarters, Toushiro began to poke around suspiciously in cupboards and drawers. He even dragged his chair around the room, standing on it to check the top shelves he couldn't reach that his lieutenant loved to hide paperwork on.

Hopping off and sitting down in a huff, he folded his arms crossly and began to draft the rant he would have at Matsumoto next time he caught her. No doubt there were more than a few bags stashed around Seireitei now, overflowing with important and confidential forms and reports just _begging_ to be misused by whoever tripped over them first.

Just when he'd reached the really juicy part of the mental tirade where he fired her and got a decent replacement, Hanataro's head poked cautiously round the doorframe.

"A-ano…Hitsugaya-taicho…thank you for sending the batch of medical claims to us, I have the receipt and counterparts here."

The healer squeaked and hurried to diagnose the young captain as he fainted and fell off his chair.

Matsumoto had done the paperwork. Properly. Without death threats.

_Something was seriously wrong._

**o)0(o**

Rangiku kicked back in the officer's mess where high-ranked shinigami were treated to some of the finest food in Seireitei, and called for another round of pudding. All that work had left her starving.

"I'm exhausted!" she declared, digging into a cake baked by a ghost Hanatarou and Yumichika had once helped to pass on. He was now a welcome addition to the afterlife's kitchens.

Rukia grinned. "I have it pretty cushy, you know. I just make Kiyone and Sentaro race each other to finish all the paperwork. They're so easy to piss off."

Renji gazed at Izuru with a wounded expression. "Why don't you do that for me?"

The blond man returned the woeful stare, and he'd had far more practice at pulling such faces. "You have nothing better to do. There's plenty of time to train _and_ manage the office in a day."

Adjusting his gleaming white captain haori, the redhead began to act rather snobbish for one who had been a Rukongai thief once upon a time. "Yeah well, discipline in this squad is really crappy compared to Byakuya's. I had a _system_ there, and everyone sorted themselves out."

"Poor baby," cooed Matsumoto. "But you can't delegate stuff that only the taicho can process."

Renji leaned back and grinned. "Abarai-taicho…" he said, tasting the suffix with glee. "Caught up to Kuchiki-taicho at last." He shot a sly look in Rukia's direction. "Now that I'm on a level with him, Rukia, I was thinking of asking you-"

Her hand shot up and forestalled his question. "I believe _I_ am the one who just defeated Nii-sama? Easily, by trapping Senbonzakura in Sode no Shirayuki's ice? If anyone is on a level with him, it's me." She flicked her black hair proudly.

Trying gallantly to hide his irritation and jealousy, considering how ripped up he got when _he_ fought her brother; the man ploughed on with his sentence. "Okay, so we can both stand up to him, even better. Maybe now we can-"

Matsumoto and Kira both did double-takes with wide eyes of surprise. Had the time finally come? Was he actually…?

Rukia's palm rammed into his face once again. "But we're in a war situation, Renji," she interrupted, pre-emptive and sweetly condescending.

"We're soul reapers! We're _always_ in a war situation!"

"Exactly!" she said brightly.

Grumbling and leaning away from her intrusive 'talk to the hand' gesture, the captain scowled despondently. "You hate me, don't you. Because I didn't get to talk to you after you were adopted, or because I couldn't chop up the Soukyoku for you, or something."

Her reply was breezy. "Don't be stupid Renji, you're my best friend!"

"Then why won't you go out with-"

"Don't be stupid, Renji, you're my best friend!"

He slammed his head against the table, as she effortlessly thwarted every attempt he made to say the words he had been biting back for years on end. "_Why not?_"

The diminuitive woman paused for a moment, seeking a decent answer. Just saying 'I have a very bad feeling about it' wouldn't really cut it, plus it would show she'd considered it herself. Several times.

"Well," she said slowly; "I've never seen many good results of it…"

Everyone turned to Matsumoto. She ignored them in favour of her cake.

"Nii-sama lost my sister Hisana, and it's like a gaping absence in the Kuchiki estate even if I never knew her."

"_Actually that's the lack of personality, and it's always been there,"_ muttered Rangiku under her breath.

"Kaien-dono and his wife died," continued Rukia, her huge blue-grey eyes seeing only the shadows of the past. "Rangiku was betrayed by Gin…"

The extroverted and cheerful woman stared into the middle distance, body language suddenly awkward and unhappy. "You're only choosing bad examples," she chided, but her heart wasn't in it.

"I don't know any good ones," was the truthful answer. Kira shook his head, neither did he.

A pall now hung over the dining table.

"Let's go get drunk!" cheered Matsumoto, punching the gloom out of the air..

"I'm broke. I had to pay for all the towers Zaraki knocked over when he fought the new taichos." Renji winced. It had been painful to say the least. If Isane hadn't been there to patch them all up again…

"Nii-sama put me under curfew because he's still mad at me," added the newest of the fukutaichos mournfully. "Surely a hundred and fifty years-old is too old to be grounded!"

Izuru merely glared at Rangiku suspiciously. "After what happened last time? I don't actually _like_ getting drunk off my face and playing strip poker!"

"You were having fun at the time!" she insisted innocently.

**o)0(o**

"Isane," called a low, familiar voice from the far side of the room. The freshly-promoted captain turned from the medicine cabinet she had been stocking as part of the Fifth Squad building's refurbishment into a ward, and was surprised to find Rangiku by the doorway.

"Oh! Can I help you, Matsumoto?" she asked, standing up to her full (great) height and dusting her palms off on her new white coat. "Welcome to the funny farm," she added with a giggle, as the visitor was an old friend from the Women's Association.

The Tenth fukutaicho, usually so beautifully vibrant and teasing and full of laughter; now looked a little worn away, a little humourless, sadness written on her soul in indelible, invisible ink.

"I've heard there's a certain kido you lend to certain people," whispered Rangiku calmly, eyes wise and aged.

Isane flinched. "Th-that's really not appropriate to you though. Don't give up hope so easily. You have plenty of strength left to li-"

"It's Number Seventy-Seven, right?" Soft, relentless.

Hesitant, the lavender-haired woman caved in, and whispered the mantra of demon magic into the other's ear.

"…Thank you…" said Matsumoto once it was learned, and walked away for the last time.

"Sayonara, Isane-chan!"

"Wait!" cried the healer, running to the door. "What do you mean, 'sayonara'?"

But she was already gone.

**o)0(o**

Matsumoto pulled a sheet of paper out of her cleavage and examined it closely. It had eluded her for days, found only after she had sorted the entire office and around three months of backlog on the paperwork, eventually surfacing from under the biggest heap that she'd left till last.

It was the Twelfth Division's weekly report, usually read solely by the affectionately-named 'techie-gamis'; and used as kindling or paper aeroplanes by everyone else.

This one, printed so recently yet buried so quickly, hailed from the Hueco Mundo invasion. It tersely detailed how to channel a senkai gate into another dimension, and more importantly how to convert any portal into a Garganta.

She'd also taken the liberty of borrowing some equipment from Nemu.

With one last, brief glance at the blue sky, the white-walled and honey-roofed labyrinth of Seireitei; the places she knew by heart since long ago…Rangiku focused elsewhere.

A land that was black and white and empty.

A wilderness where her silver lover was perfectly camouflaged.

**o)0(o**

Ran appeared behind him, and he kept his head down, fiddling with the control panel's keys and switches.

"You must have noticed me approaching," she accused him, rather blank. Haineko's hilt was tucked in her hand, the deadly ash already wandering the halls of Las Noches to ambush any arrancars that might attack.

"Oh yeah," laughed the man quietly, "I just hadn' thought what ta say yet."

Matsumoto breathed out noisily. "Fff, me neither!"

Gin finished his fidgeting with the castle's controls, drawing a loop of light around the room that shifted the walls and eliminated all entrances...and interruptions.

"So how've ya been?" he asked easily, as if over a cup of hot sake back at their old home.

She raised her own imaginary drink in a mimed toast to him. "Life sucks! I got so bored without you around I even resorted to paperwork!"

That did shock him. His grin widened and his shoulders relaxed a little. "Well there ain't been no colour round here either. Didja know Hollows can't get drunk? I'd hate ter be one!"

"You're pale enough," bit back Rangiku. She smoothed the pink scarf she'd bullied him into buying her, flicking her hair out. "You've not gone the way of the Dread Paperweight, then?"

Her voice was light; she knew she'd have noticed such a drastic change. He snickered in response. "I'll have to run that one past Aizen-taicho, bet he'd love to hear ya call the Hougyoku that."

"I tried it on Urahara, seemed to be a sore point." She huffed. Normally that guy was up for a laugh. "And you didn't answer my question."

The white reaper spread his hands wide in open innocence. "D'ya really think I'd throw away a heart that had you in it, Ran-chan?"

His fiery, colourful counterpart drew close to him, ran her fingers through his moonlight hair and tilted his head up with an inexorable grip.

Their dry, nervous lips scraped together, gingerly tasting for the lies in a lover's smile.

"Didja really expect me to let go when you were whisked away by enemy bastards, darlin'?" she returned, mimicking him soft and sinister.

His arms looped around her waist, as if to ensure that would not be occurring again. He said nothing. Maintaining a pleasant expression was hard enough.

They were walking a tightrope between love and hate, and neither could decide which side to swan dive off.

"Don't ya want ta live with me no more?"

"We are shinigami. All I can give you is my death." Stern words were delivered flippantly, making his false cheer a little more real.

"Everyone thinks yer made o' sunshine, but yer more of a pessimist than I am."

She recalled something Komamura-taicho had once said, and retaliated. "All I've learnt from you, Gin, is that the fear of dying hangs around you like a shroud, and you'll bite any kind hand in case it makes you more immortal, and I bet you never loved me because those phobias ate your heart away."

He opened his eyes, the smile fell away, and his pinkish irises met her own gaudy blue without disguise.

"All _you_ know is starvation, Ran."

"What? Since when! I'm a happy camper! Usually…"

"Nah. You never forgot how hungry ya were when we met. Ya drink and shop and laugh all the time 'cause ya gotta be entertained all the time, and yer scared of being quiet an' empty – 's why I didn' bring yer ta this godforsaken dimension. And yer say I left, but you were never satisfied even when we lived together!"

She broke away, hung her head, dawdled in the corner of the room. "Give yourself more credit," was her soft reply. "I've been going mental since you betrayed us. Since you ditched me."

Words were long-awaited and hasty and sharp, stabbing to the heart just to test they still bled red.

"You're never happy, Ran, jus' distracted."

"Don't punish me for not being able to get enough of you! That's how love has to be to survive for centuries! You're just being stupid, and if you loved me back at _all_ you'd have held on to _me_ when I let go!"

Ichimaru watched his hands fidget, tucked inside his sleeves; hands that had once been so small and almost-clean of sins and had fed a starving girl to spark their afterlife-long affair.

"That the truth?"

Silence. Stillness.

"I wish I had, but ya can't move an eyelash in the negación an' it came without warnin'."

"…You could have snuck back for me later."

"There's an awful scary barrier against exiles. Even a guy like Urahara don't dare cross it."

"Hm. At least I came to you, then."

Suddenly she was crushing him, pouring all of her longing into a vice-like embrace. A normal person's ribs would have cracked, but he returned the motion; equally missed, equally bittersweet. Their mouths met again, now passionate and giddy like the very first, all suspicion thrown aside.

…Or carefully hidden, the way a geisha might gently bite her sleeve to waylay stronger woes.

Between breaths, Matsumoto gasped the quintessential question.

"_Why?_"

**o)0(o**

"Why? Aw, ya'd never believe me Ran-chan."

"If I'm staying, you'll have to tell me sometime," she said pertinently, prodding him in the chest.

Ichimaru scratched the back of his head, grin wide and carefree, a grin that had teleported to the present from many decades ago. "A'right…Aizen-sama wants ter save the world."

Matsumoto burst out laughing. Deep belly-laughter that shook her entire body and folded her in half with sides splitting. "WHAT? Hahahaha - now tell me the real reason. No wait! He wants to open a duck sanctuary! For Hollow therapy!" Her long strawberry-blonde hair was bouncing around from the force of her chuckles.

"Okay, okay, I'm calm," she snickered eventually, hugging her ribs. "And the truth?"

"He wants ta become god," shrugged her lover as pale as the desert sands. "Aizen's final aim is t' overthrow the Spirit King."

"That's more like him."

"And use 'is powers ta change the laws o' nature."

"Interesting," conceded his golden counterpart.

"…So that Hollows're no longer created when th' souls of the dead are in pain."

That made an unexpectedly noble reason for all the horrendous things the defectors had done. Her voice was flat. "Seriously."

Gin's stance was calm and yet, somehow fierce with resolve. Glints of it showed in the angle of his head and his tensed arms. "Why d'ya think Hueco Mundo is following him? Monsters don' lay aside their instincts an' team up with shinigami just ta get a new figurehead. Aizen Sosuke has promised 'em somethin' if they're strong enough ta reach for it."

"But-! Surely he only offered them Soul Society and the real world to feast on!"

"Hollows know what they are, Ran-chan. They know their cravings're useless, they know nuthin' but a barren desert or the teeth of anutha Hollow or the blade of a zanpak'to is all that's waitin' for them. But no one wants ta hear that death's the only escape, so they eat Plus souls ta replace th' hearts they lost, an' eat each other 'cause misery loves company; _and they don' eat Aizen because he says he can save them._"

As her preconceptions crashed down around her, she could do nothing but stand and stutter and shake her head in disbelief. "You're lying so that I come back to you," but her plump lips were trembling with uncertainty as she said it.

His kitsune eyes were once more open and piercing. "One or two o' the Espada even regained their hearts from the Hougyoku. Neliel did. _It's already workin', _Rangiku!"

**o)0(o**

"There was no reason for you to exclude me," Matsumoto pointed out, simmering with anger just beneath the surface. "We've never betrayed each other before now." She said nothing of lies and secrets, because a single straw could shatter the bonds between them right now.

"Mebbe ya'd believe me, but I'd never get ya ter trust Aizen. I don' love you because I can string ya along, Rangiku. We can both see tha' kinda thing comin' a mile away."

"You're already admitting he's stringing you along! Anyone in Soul Society with half a brain would follow intentions of that magnitude, especially for the old Aizen! So why didn't he tell them?"

At the eleventh hour, Ichimaru's argument took shape. "Soutaicho'd never betray the Spirit King."

She froze. Yes, that was true. _That was an absolute._

"You've heard th' stories, right? It's unthinkable no matter wha' the prize. Not for Heaven or Hell or every soul in-between – an' the King don't care 'cause he's already in Nirvana, right? An' civil war'd tear Soul Society apart if we asked people ta choose. That ain't the final aim."

"Right…"echoed Matsumoto, suddenly twining around him like the cat her sword was named for. Gin was crushed under the familiar weight of one of her hugs, the type used to asphyxiate Hitsugaya. "Aizen has to appear like a villain, so no one thinks twice and follows him."

The ex-captain nodded. "He can manage it alone anyhow." A sobering fact.

"And all sacrifices are for a greater good," she murmured, hypnotised by the concept of a heroic traitor. "The perfect end of Hollowification. Immeasurable. But what will he do without the Hougyoku?"

"Heh. Ya mean Hime-chan's lil sneak attack? Well it ain't destroyed, an' that which don' kill it, Aizen can use ter strengthen it. He said somethin' about a basic flaw he might be able ter fix now."

An ever-more dangerous Aizen was troubling. Her stomach was twisting, a heavy snake writhed within it, telling her not to trust a word. Yet at the same time to cling close, closer than close, because this was Gin who had always been hers.

Hadn't he?

How long had he been following the god-killer?

Vanishing without warning was just part of the way Gin was, as long as she had known him. But had that been the doing of a trickster captain whose lying smiles outdid the both of them?

She relaxed into him, head leaning against an enemy uniform. The person beneath it was all that mattered to her. Ichimaru Gin, one silvery man half deceit and half soul mate. Familiar and fitted to her and all she'd ever wanted apart from food and clothes and friends.

His arms slipped around her, one at the waist, one at the neck; his breath warmed the crown of her hair. Who was he, really? She'd have said this moment was all of him, if only she were naïve and witless.

Her hands drifted up, clenched the fabric on his back, hilt still in hand. She pressed a lazy kiss against his neck as it was within easy reach. In the centre of Aizen's fortress she felt not a hint of danger, and there was not an atom of malice or harmful intentions in her soul when she released Haineko's shikai back to its sealed state.

And yet…

And yet…the reformed blade still went straight through him.

An attack that could never be sensed coming.

Matsumoto looked down, wide-eyed, and whimpered.

"Did y-y-you move first?"

Shinso retracted from her faster than the eye could follow.

"No," whispered Gin wretchedly; "no, no, I didn'. Me n' Shinso jus' have…amazin'ly fast reactions…"

"…It really felt like you stabbed me first…"

"I didn't," he hissed, the moment of horror over and the crippling pain settling into his torso. "It was you…"

"Liar…" gasped Rangiku, as her own deep wound broadcast its presence in a wave of hurt throughout her body.

"_I ain't lyin'!_" he shrieked, the loudest he'd ever been, tears prickling his scrunched-shut eyes.

Grimacing against the pain painted a false and brittle smile across her face. "I know...but I bet _he_ was."

They fell back from each other, now wary, short of breath after the metal had invaded their bodies.

"What the hell is this, Ran? Ya only got this far unharmed 'cause I told Aizen I trusted ya, an' now you're the backstabber?" There was a hint of hysterics in his voice she had never heard before. She truly had broken his trust, and shaken him to his core.

"You're Aizen's right hand man now, Gin. Nothing but his right hand, his tool with no mind of your own. Like trusting the teeth of a viper not to bite you when it was never their choice in the first place." Matsumoto gritted her teeth, determined to see this mission through. Perhaps she only gave herself the steep task moments ago, but what else was there to do when Ichimaru had discarded Soul Society for a pack of fool's gold lies?

For the dead there was nowhere else to go but Yamamoto's city, or become another of Hueco Mundo's countless victims.

And she didn't want to see him become a Hollow, warped into something soulless by the Hougyoku. She didn't want to see him lose the heart he was keeping for her sake.

She had to covince herself, had to realise, had to understand that he was just an extension of Aizen's will now, and not 'Gin' any longer. Treacherous thoughts niggled at the back of her head, pointing out that Aizen had vacated Las Noches at Ichimaru's request; that he had placed his faith in his subordinate's judgement just weeks after nearly losing the Distortion Sphere to his last uninvited guests.

Leaning heavily against the control desk, staying as still as he could to prevent the blade in him cutting deeper; the former captain tried to spit the bitterness of her betrayal from his mouth, but all that was coming out were flecks of bright red blood. Crimson was spreading where his back and ribcage were pierced – the white haori showed it all too clearly.

"Sorry ter disappoint yer _Ran-chan_ but it takes a lot more'n this ta kill a death god!"

For an instant her distress flickered across her face, she didn't want this to be happening anymore. He latched onto that chance. "We could stop this bullshit righ' now and save ourselves like we want ta. Spirits're way more resilient than bodies. How 'bout we walk away from stupid mistakes?"

Matsumoto clenched her fists tight. "I can walk away from here. But you can't."

"Naw?" he asked, voice light and dangerous. "Why's that?"

She sighed helplessly, pressing a hand against her forehead to steady the manic whirling of her mind. Having a reason indicated having a choice. She could find neither.

"_Growl, Haineko;_"

The zanpakuto splintered inside him.

"…That's why." Her voice was shattering too, she turned away unable to stomach the sight of him twisting in a fit of pain from the shrapnel bomb inside his body. "Nothing…can heal that – and you – you can't pray for Aizen to save you; because he ain't god…_yet_."

Limping to the only gap in the shifting stone walls, a high, small window showing only a faded crescent moon in a false blue sky; Rangiku stared at the liquids seeping from her stab wounds for a moment. Then she lifted her palms to the ceiling and called a fluttering scrap of darkness from empty air.

"This hell butterfly listened to everything, Gin." It settled delicate and weightless upon the tip of her finger. She murmured instructions to it, sealed the living letter with a kiss goodbye. "It's my testimony. My last report to the Gotei so they'll know not to come searching for me."

The inter-dimensional insect took flight in a quavering path of black and pink.

She watched until it was swallowed by the limited azure of Las Noches's sky.

Then she turned and ran back to her victim in a flurry of golden hair and pink silk, falling to her knees beside him and scooping him into her arms. "I'm so sorry, Gin, I'm so, so sorry…" she moaned, heart cracking in two. "I'll make it better, I swear!"

His stare was incredulous. "Don' yer think yer runnin' outta time fer that?"

"Shut up, I'm trying to remember the incantation!"

Gin obeyed, suddenly struck by the thought that laid-back, transparent Matsumoto had actually come here with a plan. She began to speak in a voice hushed by emotion.

"With silken thread gently woven from the silver lining of a dream, spin the softest of chains around a rusted birdcage, and lock the pain of awakening within.

"I call down the kiss of the serpent; healing kido #77, Blessing of Imhotep."

A flood of blissful numbness washed over them both, erasing their suffering with ease. They collapsed against each other, shaking with nervous laughter as shock overwhelmed them after the pain.

"What changed?" asked the woman, wistfully, once they had calmed.

"Nothin' did. I was lost long before ah met ya, Ran…"

Here in the shadows that were easy on Gin's sensitive eyes, away from the light Rangiku had no need of for she embodied it.

Though the kido was only a painkiller, and neither of them will heal. In the land of the Hollows where morals and loyalties are reversed, even a black lie can be beautiful.

They curl up together on the floor, entwined, and the receding beat of each other's hearts is the last thing either of them will experience. No more need for words.

There is still warmth in them, and those smiles strung between them like promissory pearls.

His skin is cold and white and ruptured by Haineko's sharp silver ashes, stained crimson just like the harvest moon. She still blazes heat beside him, colour and that solar-powered sense of joy that resides in the summer, just like the sun.

There is still an exquisite drop of life that they share, small and radiant, and if they lay close enough and still enough it just might last forever.

**o)0(o**

_Separate me from this mistake, how can I go on knowing the world will break? Walking the fine line with you now; I don't know who I am._

_The second you break down and cry, I'm not much help now - wouldn't I love to try?_

_Fear for my soul in the bed now, I don't feel any warmth._

_Scott Matthews, Elsewhere, 'Nothing's Quite Right Here'._

**o)0(o**

_Semisonic, Secret Smile_

_Nobody knows it, but you've got a secret smile; and you use it only for me_

_So save me, I'm waitin', I'm needin'; hear me pleadin'_

_And soothe me, improve me, I'm grievin', I'm barely believin' now, now…_

_When you are flying, round and around the world, and I'm lying alonely;_

_I know there's something sacred and free, reserved, and received by me only._

_Nobody knows it, but you've got a secret smile; and you use it only for me_

_Nobody knows it, but you've got a secret smile; and you use it only for me_

_So use it, and prove it. Remove this whirlin' of sadness._

_I'm losin', I'm bluesin' – but you can save me from madness, now, now…_

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	23. Testimony

**Hell Butterfly**

**Testimony**

**~23~**

**o)0(o**

To the living it is a dancing scrap of colour, a symbol of rebirth and transformation and magic, an insect that has the luck of being beautiful. To the dead, it is a guide and a messenger and a lifeline, a symbol of portals whose name is Hell.

To the heartless it means little or nothing, a plaything at best. But they are whispers of a place far away, and so Wonderwice hunts them down with as much glee as a broken soul can offer...

The butterfly is about to be crushed under his snatching fingertips.

**o)0(o**

The tattered black butterfly is plucked from Hitsugaya's tanned palm, raised to the yellow eyes of a mad scientist. Kurotsuchi turns the faded creature this way and that; it is balanced on one of his overgrown talons and wilts under the weight of his gaze.

Toushiro is gritting his teeth, biting back sharp retorts as the Twelfth Division captain prevents him from activating the insect's report. He'd come to the senkai gate after chasing a paper-trail left by Matsumoto in lieu of the usual undone paperwork, her daily dig at him.

Hands twitch on empty air. Tight fists clench round the hilt of an imaginary blade.

Hitsugaya had found the pseudo-Garganta, left gaping open like a backdoor to oblivion swinging in a breeze. He'd seen Rangiku's crimson spirit thread disappearing into the swirling dark of Hueco Mundo, and the frail messenger that limped out of the portal as he stood frozen in shock.

There is no sign of his second-in-command's return.

And he seethes, wishing that Kurotsuchi would hurry up and accept the hell butterfly's message, so that he could know whether this was a call to arms…

Or a living suicide note.

**o)0(o**

"Where is the selected candidate?" asked the official from Central 46, eyes darting around.

The Soutaicho pointed a worn old finger out of the room and into the adjoining garden. Sitting cross-legged with his back leaning against the raised edge of the ornamental pond, was Hitsugaya Toshiro.

All the assembled captains and lieutenants had heard of him before, and his incredibly fast rise through the ranks of the Gotei 13 and the Shinigami Academy.

But they hadn't been expecting to see him here, today.

Not when a captain was being chosen.

Hinamori had to cover her mouth with her hands to stop herself from shouting – _Shiro-chan_ had gained a captaincy in this amount of time? How many years had she spent toiling away to become a fukutaicho - when he didn't even want to be a shinigami? It was infuriating! But she couldn't help admitting that she was proud of his achievements.

"What is this? Some kind of joke?" snapped the official, snatching the scroll of admission from Kyoraku's grip and storming outside with it. A buxom strawberry-blonde leapt to block his path, contriving to make it look like an accident.

"I, Matsumoto Rangiku, the future fukutaicho of the candidate, will now state his case! Thank you for your attention, Sir!" she pulled off a very smart salute. The others in the room were torn between shock that she could be so smart in her behaviour and confusion, because saluting was not really a common practice in Soul Society.

"Hitsugaya Toushiro is the fastest and youngest student ever to rise through the ranks of the Gotei, having graduated in only a single year, and managed to voraciously assimilate all the required knowledge easily in that time. After learning to control his reiatsu, the vast size of which was his trigger to entering the academy when I myself spotted him, sir, he became proficient at kido with a brilliant memory for the incantations and a natural adeptness at the reiatsu manipulation required. He has also displayed considerable talent at strategy in battle during that time, with every battle he has entered being fought hard and well." For some reason she nearly burst out laughing at this point, but reigned herself in. The official gave her a scornful look. Her complex vocabulary was never going to pull the wool over his eyes - it was paltry compared to the indubitably byzantine methods of central 46.

"Never mind that," stormed the man. "My concern is not his abilities, but his lack of experience. I know full well already what he is capable of and how fast he has improved. That _boy_ has come to the attention of the Central 46 before."

The majority of the people in the room blinked in confusion. Had he? When?

"That is a confidential matter," growled the Soutaicho, warning and forbidding the official from speaking of it further. With a low hiss, the man swept into the garden.

"Hitsugaya Toushiro," he called in a clipped voice.

In the distance, the spiky white haired figure looked up in surprise.

He had just been relaxing in the garden, after the Soutaicho had summoned him. But at his arrival the clerks had said their leader was not yet ready to see him, so he still did not know for what reason he was here.

His eyes focused in on the official and transformed into the vilest glare ever seen. "You..."

"Sir," added the official, prompting the boy to pay proper respect.

"...Sir." It was begrudging. "I hope you have no more business with me. I hope no one else has copied my shikai and needs to be murdered for their mistakes."

"I understand your childish pique, but this is far too public an area in which to flaunt it. You should be aware by now, with your vaunted intelligence, that a zanpakuto split between providing power for two people will only shatter under the strain."

Toushiro looked away in a rage-filled huff, still secretly convinced that Hyournmaru would have had the strength to bear the both of them. The loss of his best friend had always remained a bitter canker in his heart,

"Sulk all you wish, but in the very distant past there was a precedent, and the results were catastrophic."

"Be that as it may, the heartless selection of who would remain the wielder of Hyourinmaru through a tournament-like farce, and the subsequent murder of the losing side were unforgivable. I know that it is possible to remove the powers of a shinigami with a simple operation on the chain of fate."

"Oh? And how did you come across knowledge so esoteric?"

Hitsugaya blinked. "I don't remember."

**o)0(o**

Back in the meeting hall, Matsumoto was sniggering.

"What's so funny?" asked Hinamori.

"I nearly made a mistake and said, hahahahaaaa, that every, haha, battle Toushiro entered...pffffff hahahahahaaa - he won!"

The room exploded into giggles. Mostly only the fukutaicho were suspect, but more than one captain also cracked a grin.

"That's not to say he doesn't get the job done and weaken the enemies considerably," she continued; "but against anything bigger than a Huge Hollow I can't say he always wins either!"

**o)0(o**

The man had noted this. "You tend to lose every Grande Menos battle you enter. Is that the required ability level of a Captain? I think not.

"You make it sound like I have never killed a Gillian," accused Toushiro frigidly. Then he froze. Had the man said Captain?

"…Taicho…?"

"Yes…" admitted the man distastefully. "That is why you were summoned to the First Division today. You have been selected for promotion."

Toushiro was stunned. He'd barely been out of the academy ten years!

"And yet your age and resulting lack of experience, and appearance are all unsuitable."

Despite being uncertain as to how he felt at the call of promotion, Shiro-chan was never one to back down from a dig at his age and child-like looks. He was riled.

"If appearance is the issue, then Kusajishi-fukutaicho looks far younger than me!"

"Kusajishi Yachiru-fukutaicho is a special case."

"She is not." Hitsugaya's reply was mulish. Certain modules of the Academy's training required attacking a larger or smaller opponent to train flexibility of movement – and Yachiru had been the only shinigami shorter than him. He sometimes wondered if surviving her brutal sparring was what had forced him to advance so fast.

"She is also far older than she appears," replied the official, ignoring him.

Toushiro spluttered. "I'm twenty-one! I'm an adult, for heaven's sake!" To back up his argument he began to count it out on his fingers to give the idiotic man before him a clear idea of his true age. "I must have died young, because I entered Soul Society at about 6 or 7 years old, I then lived in Rukongai with Momo and Baa-chan for a further 6 years, and I entered the Academy because of Matsumoto-fukutaicho, mastered my reiatsu within the first month or two, and ceased to age! You of all people should know that great spiritual power inhibits the aging of the soul – just like with Kusajishi-san! And since graduating within 12 months I've been in 10th squad for 8 years now!"

The official frowned.

"So what the hell is your problem?" shouted Hitsugaya loud enough for the elite shinigamis inside to hear him and stop their chattering abruptly. Certainly Toushiro would never usually be so blunt and aggressive, but this was the wrong man, bringing up the wrong issues, for the wrong reasons. He saw no point in being patient with a member of Central 46 who should have been old and wise enough to know better.

"And finally the issue of bankai." The official was unperturbed. "Bankai is an ability that takes at least ten years to achieve and a further ten to master. You have been a practising shinigami for a trifling nine years. For that reason I demand that you leave." Placing the scroll of office inside his sleeve, the council member drew his sword.

If Hitsugaya hadn't unsheathed his own in a flash, he might have been stabbed. He widened his stance and braced himself like a raging bull. All thoughts of promotion forgotten, he just knew he would not submit to this man for a second time.

Because the first time, Kusaka Sojiro had died.

The weight of the man's attack was far heavier than expected. Toshiro leapt backwards onto the stone rim of the pond. Feeling the water pooled behind him, he broke into a grin.

"I will only leave," he challenged, daring to throw an ultimatum in the face of a highly respected council member; "if you can make me move from this spot."

He released his reiatsu, and suddenly there was a glacier backing him up. Ice anchored him perfectly.

But the opponent was stronger than first anticipated. Releasing his shikai – the ceremonial sword had been a zanpakuto after all – he bore down on the albino brat with a titanium-weighted battle-hammer. The ice began to crack. The bureaucrat had once been a lieutenant himself, many decades ago.

Toushiro glared hotly; then calmed himself down. "What was it you wanted to see?" he asked in a cool, unflustered voice. "Bankai?"

It was as though they had been teleported to the Arctic Circle. The formerly immovable ice was now rippling and coiling around the child death god in the form of a serpentine dragon, and that dragon had bequeathed Toushiro with its wings.

"I've had bankai for five years," hissed Hitsugaya scathingly, blasting the councillor out of the hoar-frosted garden with a single slash of Hyourinmaru's blade.

A frost-rimed scroll was all that remained to say that the man had ever stood there. Picking it up and reading it slowly, he pocketed it and then flew into the Captains' Hall.

"Yo, Shiro-chan;" peeped Hinamori, eyes huge. She had heard about, but never seen her best friend's bankai before. It was impressive to say the least. Her breath was already coming out in a cloud of condensation.

He turned his head and looked at her with slanted sea-green eyes.

"No," he responded, biting back both anger and a stupidly happy grin. "It's…_Hitsugaya-taicho!_"

**o)0(o**

"How could you possibly suggest that Matsumoto was betraying us!" exploded Hitsugaya, flinging his empty hands wide in disbelief.

"Did Aizen behave any different? Who was never disloyal nor unkind, and the most respected of captains until the day he 'died'?" Yamamoto watched the small taicho glower at him, his own eyes weary and disinclined to be forgiving. "The sound of dying is easily feigned by those who know it so well."

"Are you going to keep slandering my lieutenant? Calling her false, when in fact she walked straight into the heart of Aizen's fortress, gained valuable information that she successfully reported back to us, and then killed his closest ally at the cost of her own life? To protect us from him in the future!"

In the crowded captain's hall, which they were spending far too much time arguing in recently, murmurs of agreement and dissent were curdling the air. Ukitake stepped forwards, gave the hell butterfly a cautious glance, and then turned to the Soutaicho.

"We can't deny that this new evidence of Aizen's motivations is unsettling," he said, his years showing more than usual. "Besides the fact that Sosuke may have powerful, world-changing intentions, how hard will an army of Hollows that believe in eternal salvation fight? This line he's fed them, even if it's a lie, has already affected them strongly enough to change thousands of years of unaltered behaviour. And if there's even the barest hint that this…voiding of the Hollow fate is possible – then why have we as shinigami never pursued it before now?"

Their patriarch scoffed, immovable. "Aizen's 'good intentions' will only pave the road to Hell for all of us. Is his power of manipulation already shaking your confidence in Soul Society? Are you all as foolish as those witless monsters that serve him?"

"Trust and confidence should run in both directions, Soutaicho," remarked Unohana with quiet severity. She smoothed her coat of office out, eyes averted. Her displeasure was clear enough in the set of her mouth. "This habit of belittling us at meetings is growing a little too frequent. May I remind you that we are not just your subordinates, but rather your peers?"

It was the first time their leader had openly shown surprise. He seemed to shrink a little, as regret did not sit well with either himself or his zanpakuto. There was nothing he could say. Unohana turning against him was equal to the stones and mortar of Serireitei getting up and walking away in disgust; in offending her he had only shamed himself.

"We cannot pretend to be certain about any occurrence within the gaping blind spot in our knowledge that is Hueco Mundo," he meted out finally. "I will not trust the words of Ichimaru over the evidence of my own eyes. There is no ulterior kindness in Aizen's actions."

"That's no reason to dishonour Matsumoto's memory!" barked Toushiro, never mind that he'd spent half his life telling her off for being…herself.

Kurotsuchi inserted himself into the middle of the debate, an insincere smile pasted across his bare teeth. "Shall I enlighten us? We're not reduced to merely listening…but pay close attention, because the bug will be dead shortly after this."

Without waiting for permission, he drove a needle through the butterfly's head with the tap of a painted white finger. The insect spasmed briefly, shedding flakes of its wings.

The testimony began to replay itself, transmitted in ghostly colours around the room in the odd, 180° vision of the witness.

Gin and Rangiku were in each other's arms, unharmed, mouths meeting.

Toushiro left the chamber abruptly.

He didn't see Haineko pierce Gin's back, and moments later crumble into countless razor slivers, inextricable from his flesh. He didn't see Yamamoto bow his head in apology and regret for the loss of a brave lieutenant. And he didn't see the continuing story of the butterfly's escape from Hueco Mundo.

Chased first by Wonderwice, but caught by a child-formed Neliel. Released the instant Tenebra Shirojos showed interest, a dim white shadow at the edge of the butterfly's awareness.

Allowed to flutter a short way, then trapped, tailed by three arrancars whose lack of incentive might be mistaken for innocence.

And when the Garganta came within reach, the smallest of the Espada seemed to come up with a new game, a game called 'get Itsygo's little sister out of Las Noches'. Never mind that Itsygo was dead and forgotten now, a streak of old blood in a sandy white stadium.

It was a favour in memory of a friend, and an act of kindness to herself. Tenebra's power was unfathomable to all but Aizen, and none of the Hollows were comfortable with her unstable presence in Hueco Mundo.

Toushiro never saw the butterfly and the demons enter the Garganta. He had no idea what dangers awaited him as he ran towards the Senkai gate in search of a woman who might already be lost.

**o)0(o**

Toushiro balanced on the cusp of the Senkai Gate, torn between certainty that Matsumoto would not have lied to him about something so important, and a writhing hope that she had. Because if she had lied, then she would still be alive, and he could storm Las Noches right now to bring her back. Knock some sense into her, and kill Gin himself.

Teetering on the brink, looking without seeing, he slowly realised that indistinct figures were flitting around in the dark of the Garganta. Perhaps an invasion force taking advantage of their open invitation, perhaps…maybe, maybe, his fukutaicho returning.

The blur stilled for a second, and then he saw Shirojos in the murk, still hunting for an elusive butterfly. His blood chilled, and it was not the comforting touch of Hyourinmaru's ice. He recognised her from Ichigo and Orihime's reports. An Espada capable of destroying Kurosaki's inner Hollow.

All thoughts of Matsumoto scattered in the face of Aizen's most terrifying soldier.

Duty said he should try to kill her, logic called this a golden opportunity. Yet he hesitated; even the dragon in him was cautious.

He was lifting his hands, about to summon the other officers to his side with a kido alarm, when something small, green and shrieking rocketed out of the portal and bulleted him in the head. Toushiro toppled over and cracked his skull on the pavement.

Everything spun…

"You're It!" shrieked the missile, jumping up and fleeing back into the Garganta.

"What's that supposed to mean? Get back here!" yelled the boy, once again forgetting the issue at hand.

"Dis is Eternal Tag!" Nel paused in her retreat and stuck her tongue out at the shinigami. "Ya godda keep her chasing ya or she'll eat me!"

Once the world stopped whirling, Hitsugaya picked himself up and touched the back of his skull gingerly. It was sore, but there was no blood. Belatedly he realised that Neliel Tu Oderschvank, the Fifth Espada, had buggered off, and closed the door to Hueco Mundo behind her.

Espada Zero was eyeing him like a hungry cat.

Duty be damned. He ran.

**o)0(o**

They were darting from building to building, bouncing across the rooftops at blinding speed. Tiles shattered underfoot, sometimes sending them tumbling into the gaps between houses where they would skid through the warren, playing cat-and-mouse in the alleyways.

Explosions rocked the air every time the shadows Tenebra threw at him found a target. Often she out-manoeuvred him by chance; he would swerve away at the last second as the mindless white mannequin lashed out at his chest. Technically Hitsugaya was still It, but somehow he was never the one chasing.

Ricocheting between walls, pinball between the clouds, he resorted to bankai just to widen the gap for a few seconds. It took the Espada a moment to react to his new burst of speed, and in that instant he managed to yell a brief message to the Kido Corps via his mobile phone. Hopefully they would move quickly for once.

Beating his glacial wings hard, Toushiro changed direction. He also changed the game. Now their tag battlefield had a goal.

Faster and more agile with Hyourinmaru's aid, it seemed like the hunted might escape the hunter just this once.

Until just like before, the hollow girl began to accelerate.

The lead he had quickly began to narrow, her ability to push limits further and harder than any other began to fray his nerves. The gateway into the Shrine of Penitence came into sight as they chased higher and higher above the maze of Seireitei. One of his wings sheared away without warning, and as he spiralled downwards on a collision course he risked a glimpse at his pursuer, noting that she hadn't even activated shikai. A short, dull blade had severed his ice effortlessly.

Feet slammed against the ground, he rolled and came up running, vicious grey Balas raining down around him. He discarded his other wing, it was already in tatters. Ahead, the door was opening. The captain forced all of his reiatsu into his legs, bolting across the wooden bridge and sliding into the white tower on his back. He hit the opposite wall and crumpled.

It was not physical exhaustion alone. The shrine's austere, untouchable façade of sekkiseki, the 'spirit reducing stone', had negated all of his reiryoku, and the superhuman attributes it gave him. The mane of frost around his shoulders and the long blue dragon tail shattered, pulverised to ice dust by the soulless atmosphere. Hitsugaya looked up at the tower's cool, shadowed heights. The plain staircase that spiralled internally.

He sucked in lungfuls of the chilled stale air, and began to climb, praying with every haggard step that the Zero would follow.

**o)0(o**

He was halfway up when she found him. The momentum of her Sonido sent her leaping into the air, small hands gripping the edge of the stairs, missing him by nanometres. He tried to move faster, but the sekkiseki was taking its toll. A toll that Tenebra Shirojos appeared unsettlingly impervious to.

Stalking him step for step, she followed closely and slowly, subconsciously aware that her victim was trapped.

…Until she slipped, footing lost on the slush that dripped from Toushiro's shihakusho as his powers faded. Everything he had touched was rimed with slick snowmelt.

He took advantage of the chance his weakness had given him, hurling his tired body at the nearest of the tall slit windows that punctured the sides of the shrine. There was no time to stagger back down to the entrance.

The passage was deep and narrow; he forced his way in shoulder first. The water soaking his robes made it a little easier but still his skin was scraped raw; energy draining all the time. Wriggling through the tight gap, fresh air hit his face, ribs expanding in relief as claustrophobia gave way to openness, and the exhilarating rush of free-fall.

It was up to Hyourinmaru alone whether his wings would return before he hit the ground.

**o)0(o**

Startled into anger by the unexpected, and with her alertness expanding as her will to fight grew, Shirojos focused her reiatsu and blew up the wall obstructing her.

…Nothing happened.

A new kind of numbness was clinging to her skin, different from the empty mind that haunted her whenever she was not engaged in battle. She punched the smooth bricks, denting them, at the moment it was only the energy she expelled from her body that was sapped away.

Stretching an arm through the deep window slit, she was once more like a cat, now forced to be patient outside a mouse hole. Fingertips stroked the clean atmosphere beyond the shrine, a flaming Cero sputtered into life and scorched the immaculate prison black as she sent it shrieking after her target. The second Cero barely sparked.

Tenebra pulled her arm back inside, disturbed. The time for play was over. She drew her short zanpakuto again, spat out a command and a name in a voice as hollow as her skull.

Outside, the ranks of the Kido Corps scattered as the imposing Shrine of Penitence rocked on its foundations. The spells barring the oaken gateway strained, almost splitting.

The tower trembled fitfully; a brief shivering earthquake rattled Soukyoku Hill all the way to its base.

…All was still.

**o)0(o**

Toushiro flattened himself against the foot of the pillar of rock, hyperventilating.

In front of him a molten crater bubbled, once Espada Zero's Cero. The heat of it was already melting the gossamer hoarfrost wings that had saved him.

He no longer believed that Matsumoto might return.

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden_

**o)0(o**

Toushiro, how do you feel being the only captain unable to kill anything?

Matsumoto, if you would look at the paperwork long enough to actually read it you would find several dockets pertaining to the many hollows I have killed. The fact that I have not defeated a single major character since Ichigo arrived is simply that I was too...distracted...by...his...sister? WHO WROTE THIS AUTOCUE!

**o)0(o**

_Dear Readers:_

_Here's a late Christmas present._

_All the best,_

_Alliriyan~*  
_


	24. The Parent and the Pea

**Hell Butterfly**

**The Parent and the Pea**

**~24~**

**o)0(o**

The atmosphere around the dining table was subdued. Nothing but the soft clatter of wood against china. Each time someone offered an amusing comment, the following laughter would sound too loud, too alien. Time after time the happiness would quickly return to silence.

"We're too busy concentrating on Yuzu-chan's delicious food to talk!" said Isshin brightly, the natural enemy of silence. He nudged Inoue with an elbow, she always seemed to share his sideways sense of humour. "I call this the chopstick symphony!"

Orihime giggled, agreeing that his nickname for the sound of eating was very apt. "Actually, I helped Yuzu-chan cook this," she added.

Ichigo choked, and began to re-examine his meal with a cautious chopstick and a beady eye.

"Just kidding, I only watched," the girl hurried to reassure him. "It's safe to eat, Ichigo-kun."

Silence settled again, as inevitable as nightfall.

Hitsugaya entered the room on soft feet, the paper doors of a captain's senkai sliding shut behind him. Isshin noticed the distraction of the three children sat opposite him.

"What, what?" he asked, overly-excited. "Is it another ghost?"

"I don't know," replied Yuzu, looking to her brother questioningly. She had only heard the unusual noise, blind to the spiritual side as she was. "Nii-chan?"

"It's uhh, a ghost, yeah. Toushiro;" Ichigo clarified, he couldn't remember if he'd told Yuzu about said captain before.

"Hitsugaya-taicho," corrected the boy automatically. "Why is your father staring at me?"

Isshin grinned like an idiot for no reason at all.

"Ignore him, he's just trying to join in because he's jealous. He can't actually tell where you are."

The shinigami gave no explanation for his intrusion, merely looked around the room listlessly. There was a heavy atmosphere of words left unsaid. Perhaps he had brought it with him, but it could easily be a remnant of Karin's mourning, as he knew enough words could never be said to fill the absence a person left behind.

For Matsumoto, he couldn't stutter out a single syllable anymore. Like an iceberg the emotion was freezing, but also buried below deep water; hidden in the dark. Innocuous, it seemed so easy to ignore, just a little thing; but when the time for collision came destruction would be inescapable.

So he spoke about the other issue weighing heavily on his back, despite the countless discussions over the past week since her capture in which all had agreed that the Substitute must absolutely not be allowed to know his sister was in their jurisdiction.

"I met your sister once, Kurosaki." It was difficult to reconcile that savage killing machine with its old self.

Ichigo turned sideways, as if expecting to see his dark-haired sister there, but finding only the usurper of her place, Inoue. His friend dipped her head and played with her food. She adored living in the Kurosaki household, but her heart ached every time they looked at her in search of Karin. She should have acted, when their paths crossed in Las Noches. She should have done something to save her.

"When?" asked the brother eventually.

"When I was at the park once. I was in a gigai. She mistook me for some brat her age and forced me to play football on her team." There had been an opulent sunset, and he'd been lost in memories of easier days when she and her friends had happened upon him. He wouldn't admit that he'd returned on a different day to win the match for them. "And then when a Huge Hollow appeared, she tried to kill it with the football." Afterwards she had grumbled that it usually worked on the little ones when they were filming some idiot named Don Kanonji's new show. The reaper had just nodded dumbly, accepting this as normal since he had given up on doubting the abilities of any Kurosaki a long time ago. "Once she realised I was a shinigami, she started demanding to know where you'd vanished off to. Then she had the nerve to tell me I was pretty tough for a midget, or something, that patronising little…" he huffed and folded his arms, growling.

Isshin snorted with laughter, quickly trying to disguise the slip by gulping his drink and coughing instead. Yuzu interpreted this as sniffling that he was left out, the usual behaviour when ghosts were in residence.

"Toushiro-kun said he used to play football with Karin-chan, Otou," explained the lonely twin, a kind attempt to include her father. The head of the family wiped an invisible tear from his eye.

"Toushiro and Karin playing together," he repeated with a gentle, far-off smile. "Fancy that."

Ichigo was grudgingly impressed but also quite annoyed. "You mean, I work my ass off trying to lay low, and she's off playing five-a-side with the Other Side? What did you tell her?"

"Weren't you hiding in cellars trying to master taboo powers with a misfit gang of excommunicated vaizards? I don't keep tabs on you!"

"Which team won?" asked Orihime, earning herself a scowl from the taicho.

"My team, naturally!"

A loud thump came from the other side of the room. Everyone spun to decipher the noise, shocked. And then, as one, they all sighed wearily and looked away.

Isshin had plastered himself against the wall, supplicant to Masaki's poster, tears of joy gushing down his face. "DO YOU HEAR THAT, MASAKI-CHAN? KARIN AND TOUSHIRO PLAYING FOOTBALL TOGETHER! OUR BABY HAD A BOYFRIEND!"

Ichigo winced, Orihime laughed, and Yuzu looked a little distraught that her twin had never told her of this so-called love interest. Hitsugaya was itching to kill the man, and forced himself to voice why he had come here just to change the subject.

"Kurosaki, Inoue, I didn't come here to listen to your father's drivel."

**o)0(o**

"…Actually, there are far more serious matters I must inform you of."

He gazed at the black silk he had tied around the hilt and sash of his zanpakuto, a soldier's symbol of mourning.

"My fukutaicho…she, um…Matsumoto went into Hueco Mundo alone last week. And she…fell in the line of duty…"

They had said, behind his back, in the aftermath of that harrowing day; _He is an old child, but still only a child. He doesn't understand that some fight for more than duty or pride._ So perhaps she hadn't fallen in the line of duty; perhaps severing her loose ends with a relationship that failed long ago had cut her in half too, perhaps she simply hadn't expected the man who loved her to retaliate.

But what could he say about that to someone like Kurosaki, who sometimes pushed himself to death's door for no discernible reason at all?

Orihime was sobbing, so accustomed and well-practiced at grieving that she bypassed the numb state he himself was in, as he tried to wrap his head around his lieutenant's absence. Ichigo appeared shell-shocked; Yuzu attempted not to hear any more of his morbid words. Their father had moved to comfort his house-guest, hiding tears for a long-lost friend behind Inoue's own.

"She killed Ichimaru single-handedly…she was…very brave, resourceful…and strong."

Toushiro's stern countenance cracked, he choked on incredulous laughter. "She even did all the paperwork! At the end she was suddenly…perfect…without warning!" The laugh became a moan. The young captain bit his fist, spare arm digging into his stomach, battling nausea and grief. He had been moving on autopilot, fuelled by duty alone for the past week. However, when every last piece of work had been done, even bottom-of-the-list informing the former ryokas, he found nothing left in him to cushion the blow.

At least when Sojiro was killed, he had _known_ he was losing his best friend.

**o)0(o**

In the kitchen, propped against the kettle like any other lifeless plush toy, Kon was staring at the scene of grief with glassy button eyes. His outfit for the day was a black tuxedo with ruffled white shirt. More masculine than usual, yes, but Yuzu would even give James Bond frills. His brown felt mane was spangled with purple glitter glue.

Kon-sama had a Mission.

Earlier that day, he'd been thinking hard about things. Things like the secrets he kept for people in disguise, the powerful, esoteric knowledge locked away in that fluffy head of his. It was starting to get painful, watching that man fake ignorance and pretend to hide the full extent of his involvement.

Yes, Kon-sama had a dangerous Mission, a cunning undertaking that might put him at major risk.

But he owed it to his nasty, unfeeling, idiot saviour to bare the truth. Plus, he really wanted to see that brat have a heart attack.

When Yuzu had skipped into the kitchen with him, telling him sternly to guard the food and stop anything from burning, talking straight over his insistent reminders that he didn't know how to cook with chatter about sparkles and roses and sewing kits; the Great Kon-sama had put his nefarious plan into action…

**o)0(o**

Isshin gasped, enveloping Inoue in a hug as she burst out crying for reasons no standard, non-spiritual person could ever decipher. "Orihime-chan," he sniffled, patting her head, for which she was actually grateful. "It must be hard to live in the clinic where your brother passed away. I bet it just hit you now."

It was a surprisingly passable excuse; he was amazed that he could keep the situation so understandable whilst trying to not break down at Toushiro's report. Before the day at the donut shop, it had been twenty years since he had seen Matsumoto. And now that lucky meeting felt more like a farewell, the true last time he would ever see his friend. His tears dripped into the girl's hair, quickly absorbed and forgotten, and that was okay.

So long as Ichigo kept believing that his father was the same old over-emotional idiot, everything would be okay.

Once the strained air had cleared a little, and he was sure even the ghost he technically couldn't see had regained its composure, Isshin cleared his throat and sat back down.

"Now eat up!" he commanded, voice gruff rather than cheery. "And finish all your peas, kids, they're good for you." He started shovelling food into his mouth.

"Peas? I didn't put any peas in," pondered Yuzu, reaching for her bowl. "I'll clear this away, maybe we should go straight to…"

_**POCK!**_

Blue lightning crackled around Isshin as he swallowed, and his shinigami form exploded out of his physical body.

Or, more accurately, his gigai.

The doctor froze, hands still in the eating position and elbows in mid-air, black shihakusho plain for all to see. He winced in guilt. Beside him, hijacking his body, Kon sniggered.

Hitsugaya Toushiro was pointing at him, arm trembling; face aghast.

"T – T – T – _TAICHO!_"

"…pudding?" finished Yuzu, wondering why Orihime-chan was squealing, and why Nii-chan had just collapsed under the table in a dead faint.

**o)0(o**


	25. Ichioku Gyokusai

**Hell Butterfly**

**Ichioku Gyokusai**

**~25~**

**o)0(o**

"WHY ARE YOU DEAD?" bellowed Ichigo, whacking his head on the underneath of the table as he tried to scramble up and fix his father with a wild-eyed stare.

"How come I didn't remember ANYTHING about you until now?" roared Hitsugaya, gesturing madly at his former captain.

"What was Kon doing in your food?" asked Inoue, completely missing the more obvious problem.

"Why are you all shouting?" wailed Yuzu, unnerved.

Ichigo was still reeling. "Our father is a _shinigami_!" he spat.

"But, don't they live in false bodies?"

"Yes," replied everyone else in the room.

"But where do babies come from if you have a false body?" asked his sister, a horrifying twist on the classic dreaded question. "Are we zombies or robots or something?"

Ichigo suffered a brief aneurysm of the brain. To protect his sanity he quickly backtracked to Inoue's question.

"Yeah, Kon, why were you in our food? Trying to run off in our bodies without permission?" guessed Ichigo suspiciously. The Not-Isshin looked pathetic and unloved. This was quickly replaced with an expression of zeal. In this respect his behaviour was nigh on indistinguishable from the real Isshin, meaning that the words of revelation that followed came almost from the horse's mouth.

"THE GREAT KON-SAMA was trying to uncover your father's LIES! I've known he was a shinigami for _months_! I've seen him kill an _arrancar_! He's in _cahoots_ with URAHARA! IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY!"

Isshin quailed before the five dark stares aimed at him. "I can _explain_!" he whimpered.

"Not well enough," swore Ichigo, already rolling up his sleeves and preparing himself to dole out a beating.

"Kurosaki-taicho," muttered Hitsugaya; "I don't know what you did to my memories, but I'm not sure I'm pleased they've been restored."

The doctor hid his face in his hands. "It's not all my _faaault_!" he howled, hurling himself back against the wall. "In fact it's not my fault at all!"

"So you weren't involved with Urahara when he got kicked out of Soul Society then?" asked his son. The man shook his head, water pouring down his cheeks at the thought that his children would now hate him even more. It elicited little sympathy.

"If you're a shinigami then why didn't you save Karin-chan from the…f-from the m-m-monster?" Yuzu had started trembling, eyes swimming with unshed tears she had sworn to hold back just like her twin used to. Her brother flinched.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't make you even more dead than you are already," he growled. "How long have you been sitting around pretending Hollows don't exist and lying that you can't see ghosts, whilst all around you our family's been dropping like flies? You're a captain! You could have prevented _all of this!_"

"No!" shouted back their father, the accusation cutting far too deep. "No I could not!" He balked at revealing the truth after so long, just for a moment, then continued at a slightly calmer tone. "And you have no idea of the circumstances."

And without missing a beat, he turned and ripped the poster of his wife off the wall. Perhaps the visitors missed the significance of this, yet his children were all but screaming _sacrilege!_

Isshin presented them the other side. It bore another picture of Masaki, identically surrounded by CGI glitter and flowers and glaring titles, her auburn hair flowing in a breeze, her wide smile just the way her children dimly remembered it.

The black shihakusho was new.

"What did you tell the Cult to make them leave you alone?" asked Orihime shakily.

"Uh, yeah," bleated Ichigo, his world view effectively flipped inside out.

"…That my mother was a shinigami."

**o)0(o**

Orange flames surged up and lapped at clouds fleeing across the bright blue sky. Entire walls went spinning away into the distance; clay tiles fell in shattering rain.

In the depth of the remaining crater, foundations crumbled, and the last basement wall keeled over on top of the former building's only inhabitant.

Urahara-taicho put down his binoculars, sighed, and looked at Unohana mournfully. "Could you send your people in please?" he asked, sheepish.

She pursed her lips. "That's the third time this month."

"We'll get the calibration right eventually?"

"We're still in the first week of this month."

"…I know that…"

**o)0(o**

Isshin approached the area cautiously, laid his first aid kit to one side once he was sure nothing else was going to explode, and began hauling bricks. It was his task today to recover and identify the poor soul crushed underneath the wreckage. After much straining of muscles and shifting of debris, he reached his target.

_A fallen angel, the tragic early demise of what could only be the most enchanting flower in all creation…_

He fell to his knees and wept for the delicate blossom he had never met…

"Look, I know Fourth Squad is pathetic, but surely_ I_ have more reason to be crying than you?" The words were said in a voice like gentle songbirds serenading the new dawn. He looked down at his ex-patient with blurry eyes.

"Y-you're alive?"

"Don't worry," coughed the woman, stretching her back out among the rubble. "I have so much reiatsu you could bounce anvils off my head."

"So that massive wound on your temple was caused by…?"

"An anvil bouncing off my head. Taicho uses it to make new tools for his experiments." She smiled, and it was as if a second sun had risen. He grinned back like an idiot.

"Would you go out with me?"

_Not 'like' an idiot_, she corrected herself. _He __**is**__ an idiot._ "Could you just…do your job, please?"

"Anything for you, my love!"

**o)0(o**

"Hold up," said Ichigo, looking worried; "did you just say you were in Fourth?"

"Fifth Seat, yes!" cheered the doctor.

Ichigo introduced his forehead to the dining table. "My soul-cred is ruined…"

"NONSENSE! Fourth Squad is SUPER COOL-"

"You can't pull that one on us. We've met Hanatarou."

"…Drat. _Anyway, that was the start of our love story…_"

**o)0(o**

"MASAKI-CHAAAN!"

"Hide me," whimpered Masaki to her friend. Yoruichi grinned wickedly. "I think he's funny."

"Traitor."

Isshin had kicked up a cloud of dust in his haste to reach them. "Masaki-chaaan! I've chosen our house for when we're married with a million cute little babies!"

Masaki wound her arm up and let loose.

"FALCOOOON PAWWWWWWNCH!"

Isshin twinkled in the sky briefly, and disappeared.

Yoruichi played with a strand of her purple hair. "I thought your shikai was called Gyokusai," noted the taicho's partner in crime.

"It is," nodded Masaki, shaking her stinging hand. "That was actually a secret karate technique."

"Ah, so…"

**o)0(o**

Isshin was approaching.

She slammed the door shut. He ran straight through it - into her fist. Poleaxed, he dropped to the floor like a lead pipe.

Later she asked Urahara a pertinent question.

"Can we replace our doors with something tougher than paper, please?"

"We can't afford to," trilled her captain merrily. "Too many explosions!"

**o)0(o**

Isshin was seated in the lotus position, katana laid across his lap. He was performing Jinzen, attempting to communicate with the spirit of his zanpakuto blade in order to gain greater powers and make Masaki notice him. He had also been training extensively in the other three combat forms, Kido, Hado and Shunpo, as well.

Matsumoto popped up beside him.

"Wanna go clubbing with me in Karakura? Gin snuck me a captain's permit for the senkai gate...?" She waved the scrap of paper temptingly before his eyes.

His resolution buckled.

"_Please_," he sniffled.

**o)0(o**

"If you can't be interesting could you at least be unique?" huffed Masaki as Isshin fell out of her barrack locker for the third time that week.

"You're asking him to be uniquely irritating?" interjected Gin, who had arrived to collect a new-fangled 'Soul Phone' from her.

"Kinda."

Kurosaki grinned ecstatically. "HEY! I CAN DO THAT! YAAAAAY!"

**o)0(o**

"Urahara, I QUIT!"

"Masaki -chan! We had a deal!"

"That's as may be, but every time a building collapses on me or you try to synthesise a new elemental particle or, or, whatever! ... I end up in hospital. And every time I end up in hospital... HE'S THERE!"

"I feel your pain Masaki-chan... But I think we're nearly there now!"

"That's what you said, how many years ago now?"

**o)0(o**

"Matsumoto, do you think if you went out with me, it would make Masaki-chan jealous?"

"Nope." She replied instantly and easily.

"Pleeeease?"

"Oh alright then. Sake's on you."

After the horrific events of that one night, they could not face each other for at least a month.

**o)0(o**

Hollows were invading Soul Society, and judging by the frantic urgency of the alarms beaten out on wooden slats around Seireitei, the breach was serious.

Guards and shinigamis were racing to the hot spot from all over the city, and Isshin made sure to slip into the path of his favourite victim. Once she spotted him she shook her head in disgust, long wavy hair bouncing around her shoulders. But a pause later, she seemed to have come up with an idea.

When they reached the scene of the invasion Masaki accelerated into shunpo and launched herself into the air, skipping over the heads of the mass of assembling fighters. "YOU CAN ALL HEAD BACK!" she bellowed. "TECH SQUAD'S GOING TO DEAL WITH THIS! RETREAT IMMEDIATELY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE CAUGHT IN THE BLAST ZONE. And if you do want to be, go get your head checked," she muttered to herself, spotting Isshin wavering between safety and stalking in the throng.

Once the crowd began to dissipate, she hopped to the ground behind him and caught the back of his shihakusho as he finally decided to leave.

"Not you."

"AH! You want some help with the bomb darling?" He blinked. "I know you must be finally realising your deep and intense feelings for me, Masaki-chan-darling, but I'm not the best person for techie help. Medic, remember?"

"It's not that, I just want to show you something. It may change the way you see me."

"YOU'RE NOT AN EXPERIMENT, ARE YOU?"

"No!" laughed the woman despite herself. "I'm all natural, fortuitous windfall. But you'll see what the whole issue with Twelfth blowing itself up half the time is."

The black mass of Gillians in the distance was swelling in numbers, and vicious red Ceros seared the air as they began to build up to a hunting frenzy. "Take this," said Masaki off-handedly, tossing a small red tag at her stalker. "And don't lose it."

He examined the tiny charm. It was made of scarlet leather, with a black kanji inked onto the square of white silk stuck to one side.

"I'll take care of the Gillians, so just stay back here and watch."

This took a moment to sink in, and once he looked up she had already charged into the distance.

"Hey...HEY! Masaki-chan, you can't take on all of those ALONE?"

**o)0(o**

Once she was in range, Masaki leapt up into the overcast sky for a better vantage point. A strong gust of wind battered her, the atmosphere disturbed by all the superheated lasers the Grande Menos were firing.

"GYOKUSAI!" yelled the death god, unsheathing her zanpakuto. It tripled in size, its ridiculous length explaining why she preferred to fight in the sky and also foreshadowing her abysmal reiatsu control. She'd tried making her sword smaller and less ungainly, but it simply didn't work.

Diamond dust began to settle out of the air around, as the seething reiatsu churning out of her slender form crystallised in an attempt to condense itself. It looked like a sandstorm of powdered quartz. The zanpakuto's form mirrored its name: 'shattered jewel'.

There was no technique or special ability to her attack, simply a release of limiters.

She went berserk.

The entire front flank of Gillians tumbled like wheat before a scythe as she ploughed into them, decimating their ranks. They howled strange and mournful sounds as they were cut down, and those she didn't reach with her blade were burned by the hailstones of solidified reiatsu churning through the air like leaves in a gale. Every Cero that came near her was deflected by the greater concentration of spiritual energy she possessed.

Such an onslaught could not last long.

The herd of Gillian lacked an Adjuchas for a leader, thus they conspired to create one.

The strange soldiers began to rip chunks out of each other in their panic, piling up in heaps and merging together in a sea of pitch black and chalk white. The level of their conjoined reiatsu spiked dangerously.

"Typical..." sighed Masaki. "I made it worse."

Before she could disintegrate the Gillians in their moment of shared weakness, their evolution truly took hold and a vast Caja Negacion surrounded the writhing mountain of Hollows, unsurpassable. There was nothing she could do but wait for the new-born Adjuchas to emerge.

As the wait dragged on she pulled her soul phone from a pocket within her shihakusho and began filming the metamorphosis. At least Kisuke would be interested in studying it, right?

The air echoed with the sound of shattering glass, as the yellow cage of light crumbled and fell apart. The Adjucha surged forwards, wasting no time in adjusting to its regenerated mind and sense of self, lost to the former drones it had agglomerated itself from. It was enormous, as high as a tower.

A massive hand swatted Masaki out of the air whilst she was belatedly tucking her phone away. She crashed into the ground several metres away, carving a deep gouge into the loose earth. With a loud thunderclap of sonido, the grande menos was already beside her, the second hand now sweeping down to cuff her back into the sky. But this time she had no control, tumbling in free-fall, a ragdoll skydiving.

She created a new crater when she thumped into the dust next to Isshin.

"Masaki, you can't-!" he said urgently, trying to run to her aid the same as he did every time she turned up covered in wounds, but this time he rebounded of the barrier that had sprung up around him. "What is this?"

"That's gonna keep you alive," breezed Masaki, reaching out from her conveniently pre-dug grave to rap the shield of blue reiatsu with the back of her hand. "Now watch," said the woman gravely, as the ravenous adjucha screamed the air full of bloody red murder. She held her over-long blade over her head, breathed in calm, breathed out fear, and gave a quiet, focused command.

"Bankai."

**o)0(o**

Isshin barely knew how to describe the gut-wrenching flood of distilled power that poured out of her then. Her body began to judder, dividing, splitting off into many parts all of equally ferocious strength. They weren't quite clones, some taller, some shorter, as far as he could tell they were older and younger too.

Masaki had been hiding an army all this time?

For one disconcerting moment they all moved in unison, gracefully lowering their identical blades and moving into battle-ready stances. And without cue all proceeded to unleash fury upon the adjuchas that was already dropping a storm of Balas upon them.

He couldn't keep track. Each moved differently, each displayed a different style of fighting, a different level of training, different strategies. But as the terrifying Grande Menos was hacked and slashed into submission, defeated by the weight of numbers and reiatsu, Isshin was reminded only of a shoal of starving piranhas.

It was little time before the leviathan had been reduced to a motionless, chewed-up, black-bleeding corpse. The horde of Masaki's bankai spread out across the desert bordering Soul Society and obliterated any Gillian or minor Hollows that remained.

A small figure peered through the dark slit that ruptured the cerulean sky and led into the depths of Hueco Mundo. It frowned at the decimation of its 'fellows' and pulled the inter-dimensional seam shut with a small, human-shaped hand, shaking its brown-haired head in dissatisfaction.

**o)0(o**

"This is why you should really think of me as a terminal patient," explained Masaki later, hobbling back to him with a hundred small wounds. Barely a single Hollow had managed to scratch her. They were all side effects of her bankai. "What you just saw is called Ichioku Gyokusai. 'One Hundred Million Broken Jewels.' It allows me to expel all my power at once in a mass suicide attack."

As glittering reiryoku drifted down around them, she tapped the dome of blue energy and dispelled it.

"I'm only growing more and more powerful. It's why Kisuke can never get the calibration right: my spirit shifts too much. In the end it'll be self-destructive so to be brutally honest you're just wasting your time, Kurosaki."

"What's so terrible about having a bankai that turns you into a one-woman-army?" laughed Isshin, still in awe of her. "That's something to be proud of!"

Her smile was fragile. "Those people weren't created by my zanpakuto's spirit, Kurosaki, they came from me." Her voice was insistent, because he didn't understand. "Those were other mes. Taicho thinks they're my past lives. Don't you get it, you idiot, that they're not meant to be here? Not meant to be now, when it's _my _turn to live?" She was beginning to feel faint; he diagnosed it from her washed-out complexion and shivering eyes, unable to focus.

He sat her down among the shards of pale green reiryoku, that was slowly fading yet seared his fingers whenever he touched it.

"You'd better give me a hand with this medical kido then," said the healer gruffly.

She blinked. "Kido?"

"Of course! Considering how often you blow yourself up, you must be a dab hand at putting yourself back together by now!"

She leaned away.

"I don't do kido."

"Hoh?"

"For me kido is like trying to take a thimble of water from the Niagara Falls! The water pressure alone would rip your hand right off if you even attempted it!"

An evil expression crawled over Isshin's face and lurked there, gloating.

"Aha. So you DO need me after all."

She had thought her plan to get rid of him was fool-proof.

Cue the fool.

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden_

**o)0(o**

Ichigo: Wait, so, you had a one night stand with Matsumoto?  
Isshin: That's really none of your business, son.  
Ichigo: IS THAT WHY I'M THE ONLY GINGER CHILD?  
Isshin: *chokes* Would you stop leaping to conclusions!

**o)0(o**

_Happy New Year, guys!_

_Alliriyan~*_


	26. Soul Awakening

**~o) Hell Butterfly (o~**

**Soul Awakening**

**~26~**

**o)0(o**

"Why are you agreeing to this?"

Urahara looked troubled, staring at a tiny black bead in his palm. It had been manufactured via hypothetical soul technology, 10% genius, 15% luck, 20% time and error, and 100% dangerous. He planned to layer Masaki's reiatsu around it, culture it like a pearl, until it could reach its true potential.

He couldn't even attempt to explain it to her.

She slammed her hand down on the table, _bring it on_.

"Because I have no idea what you're going to do."

Sighing, he waved her over to the latest reiryoku extractor, hoping she wouldn't blow it up this time. Should the experiment prove successful, her energy would be left drained for weeks. It might help to reduce her nightmares as well, if all went well.

They clasped dry, nervous palms for a moment, locked eyes. To quell the slight fear that always preceded their dangerous trials, Kisuke spoke.

"_Let's kill one hundred, million birds with one stone."_

**o)0(o  
**

Isshin sauntered into his old haunt, the Fourth Squad hospital, with a gleam in his eye and a proud swish of his white haori. Eighty years of unrelenting effort had resulted in promotions, squad transfers and a far-reaching reputation, in short, the captain of Tenth had pretty much everything.

Everything except his original goal – Masaki's adoration.

"Retsu-san!" he cheered with the informality captaincy allowed. "How's things?"

Unohana swept out of the private examination room, her mouth set in a grim line. "Kurosaki -taicho, we have an urgent situation. Would it be within your power to locate Urahara Kisuke in Karakura town and extract information from him for me?"

Isshin gaped at her. That was the kind of mission TOUGH GUYS were sent out on. Strong, dependable, charismatic types; capable of wringing confessions from mad scientists of unimaginable power and prowess. His chest swelled with pride and a little cautious bravado.

"CERTAINLY UNOHANA-TAICHO!" he roared gaily, making sure everyone in the ward heard how impressive he was. "What's it about?"

"I need to gain further information on Masaki-san's condition, that only Urahara has ever successfully diagnosed, in order to treat at least her symptoms. If I do not, there is a chance she may die-"

Retsu blinked, and realised she was talking to empty air. "Thank you, Kuroasaki-san!" she called politely after him. He was already halfway to the senkai gates.

**o)0(o  
**

"I prefer an air of mystery in a man," explained Masaki vaguely, rotating her wrist in an attempt to demonstrate this.

"Oh," laughed Unohana, wrapping a bandage around the other, splinted wrist, which had been broken in another of 12th Squad's barrack explosions. "And confusion doesn't count, does it?"

The younger woman caught the reference and snorted. "Isshin? He's an open book!"

The entire ward stopped, and everyone stared at her. Even the guy who was meant to be under anaesthetic.

"Or…not?" she continued nervously.

"You must be a talented reader, Masaki-chan," replied Unohana, her eyes closing in a gentle smile. The ward slowly picked up its bustle again, as the shock that someone actually understood the eccentric Kurosaki-taicho passed.

"Pfft. Give it a rest."

**o)0(o**

"How did you get in here?" asked Urahara in mild surprise, as Isshin sat down at his work table and stared at him keenly.

"It's my magical Isshin sliding technique. Now explain to me –"

Kisuke batted his eyelids innocently at Isshin from beneath the stripy grocers' hat perched upon his blond head. "Ara? You need me, Kurosaki-taicho? Is Soul Society suffering from a city wide epidemic of insanity?"

"What? No!" Isshin was hit for six. "What on earth makes you say that?"

"I'm merely mystified as to how you could have become a captain, Kurosaki-san!" trilled the shopkeeper, waving his cane around.

"...I can't take you seriously in that hat…please take it off, Urahara-taicho…"

"Apologies, but I love it! It's never coming off."

"Fine," Isshin suddenly became deathly serious. Kisuke was slightly taken aback, although the fierce intent radiating from the man went some way towards explaining his elevated post. "I'm not going to take no for an answer on this, because it concerns the LOVE OF MY LIFE and is also an order from Unohana-taicho…whom we all fear."

"Go on," said Urahara, intrigued,

"Masaki."

That single word was enough. Kisuke 's face went grey, and he sat down heavily. "That time has come, has it?"

Isshin hunched down next to him, like the gorilla he was, and nodded. Though to be honest, having hared off before Unohana could finish, he had no idea what 'that time' entailed.

"Listen carefully, Kurosaki," commanded the exile sternly. "To save Masaki will necessitate going against the Soutaicho and forging an elaborate cover-up operation. He will never agree to what needs to be done to save her life. Therefore it's better if he is never made aware of it."

"What's happening to her?"

"It's simple," said Urahara, flatly. "Her soul is falling apart."

"What? Why!"

The scientist dragged a hand down his face. "Have you any comprehension how unfathomably hard it is to research things like this?"

Isshin blinked owlishly.

"It's not like we can measure people from one life to the next. I might be gravely mistaken by my reincarnation theories; she may just be going insane." The crooked genius looked at the experimental Modified Souls incubating in tanks scattered around the room.

"…Or I may have unburied a thousand years' worth of research from a single person."

**o)0(o**

"And then he said to me, 'Have you heard of the Soul Sleep and the Chain of Fate?'"

Orihime felt Ichigo stiffen beside her. Yes he had. She turned to see pain haunting his face.

When Kuchiki Byakuya had retrieved his sister from the lowlifes of Karakura Town, it was the agonising severing of the Soul Sleep and the Chain of Fate that had cut Rukia's powers from the boy's spirit body. But that hadn't been the only time.

He flinched, thrown back in time to a desolate memory he had never wished to revisit.

"_Zanpakutos only kill the Hollow; then the soul is released again. But the soul hid in the first place because there were things it couldn't bear."_

_Drenched to the bone, losing circulation in the tight nest of chains, Ichigo had never felt more weak and helpless as his pale imitation explained the secrets of life and death._

"_That's what these are for…" and it flicked the metal binds, making them hum eerily; "Chains of Fate and the Soul Sleep…"_

**o)0(o**

These are the sources of our shinigami powers; to remove them would be to lose our zanpakuto and reiatsu.

But do you know what they are for? The Chain of Fate is what pins the soul in place, what defines its form and its personality. Usually it can't be seen within the soulscape. And the Soul Sleep is like...a reservoir of memories. When we die, the Chain of Fate will drag us into Soul Sleep and cleanse the soul in preparation for the next life. Can you imagine if babies were born with the minds of adults, or if we had to contend with ten generations of likes and dislikes every time we were faced with a simple decision? Soul Sleep prevents this.

Now, Masaki's Chain of Fate is corrupt, rusted, it doesn't work properly. Like a genetic mutation for a living person; possibly even an autistic savant who gains genius skills in one area as they lose the ability to cope with several others.

When the Chain of Fate is damaged, so is the Soul Sleep.

The world you visit when you convene with your zanpakuto spirit, that is the inner landscape of your soul. And you will find that it is not empty. Although it may be distorted by your emotions or overtaken by your zanpakuto's effigy, still some part of the permanent surroundings will be more than it seems. For some people it is buildings, forests, beaches...others find their inner worlds full of ice or fire or clouds...some might be crowded, some might seem almost empty.

Masaki's was a field of grass. And as she walked through it she often cut her feet on shards of jade hidden among the stems. That is how her zanpakuto, Gyokusai, revealed itself to her. But focus on the flowers that are dotted throughout the meadow.

She told me that when she was young, all the flowers were small, peaceful, and dormant.

The older she grew and the more her powers activated, the buds began to change.

Each flower that bloomed represented one of her past lives waking up.

I decided to call her illness 'Soul Awakening'.

The first symptom is a rush of reiatsu as their subconscious joins with hers. The soul expands.

The second consequence is a loss of control, a difficulty with zanpakuto techniques; inability to work with fine detail in kido.

And as the situation advances, the past incarnations and the current Masaki become more and more at odds, echoing through each other, until they end in insanity and self-destruction.

_We are not meant to live like this._

**o)0(o**

"Hello Masaki," said Isshin gently.

She looked at him, cursed, and huddled away. Her eyes were blackened from insomnia, her fingers shook, and her arms were covered in patches much like Zaraki's eye patch in an attempt to vent her excess reiatsu. Kurostuchi Mayuri was not quite so adept as his predecessor, and makeshift fixes were all he had offered her before suggesting vivisection with an insidiously gleeful grin.

"How are the flowers?" he asked, perhaps a softer way to refer to her terminal illness.

She winced, slumped on the hospital gurney. "Who could tell?" she replied in a distressed sob. "I can barely see them through the rain."

"Rain?" he repeated.

"When we're unhappy, rain falls within our souls. When we're dying, it becomes a deluge, washing our old loves away to cleanse the spirit for the next time." She gestured dramatically as she spoke in swooping tones; then scoffed. "It's a trick! Reincarnation is a lie! We are our memories, but our memories get poured down the drain."

She was angrier than he'd ever seen her; a bitter ire that seemed to co me from someone else yet fell from her mouth. This schizophrenic behaviour was simply yet another symptom. Unohana had debriefed him on all her medical details.

He had no idea how to heal her, nor comfort her, nor even wish her well in such a bleak situation. Urahara's suggested cure sounded like dying in its own right.

"Your old taicho hasn't forgotten you, you know." She looked up, just for a second, and he saw the tear tracks carved into her cheeks. "He has it all laid out for you. He's been working on some of this stuff for years."

She half-laughed, mouth cracked a painful smile. "He's just found new ways to get me into trouble, hasn't he?"

"I heard he stole the main idea from a Quincy," muttered Isshin nonchalantly. "Bit of a dirty cheat for a genius, isn't he?"

"I just..." She shrugged helplessly, hopelessly. There was nothing she could say. She was powerless against herself.

"When I go to my next life, I'll be glad to know that the memories of this one aren't lost. Lord knows I won't be lucky enough to meet someone like you twice." Even the indomitable Kurosaki seemed subdued.

Her brow crumpled faintly, and she continued to stare into the middle distance. His hand hovered over her shoulder, not daring to touch, "We're not exactly soul mates..."

"You really think it's a good thing that these lives are all locked away and breaking out?"

"Well, Masaki-chan, you can't keep a memory unless some part of you actively remembers it - doesn't that mean you're not lost at all?"

**o)0(o**

A parade of ghosts behind her eyes and with every unfamiliar face a tidal wave of déjà vu, Masaki was adrift in an ocean of strangers.

It was nearing the time when she would give in, she could feel her grip slipping with every passing minute, frequently she would black out, blink and realise she had been someone else for several minutes. In every atom of her body she could feel the lead weight of terror.

_What will I be? Who will I be? How long can I stay strong? If I fall to this, will there be anything left but another raving Hollow?_

_Did I really fight for all these years just to become another monster?_

They said that arrangements were being made, they met clandestine by night and in hushed whispers discussed her fate. But her soul was deteriorating. It was hopeless. Not even the formidable Unohana Retsu could do anything to halt this.

It wasn't so much that Masaki was going to die and move on, but that she was going to cease to exist.

Words and worries not her own tugged her thoughts this way and that. She didn't know where she was, she had been looking for her brother, what happened to her bicycle?

None of it made any sense.

She couldn't cope any longer.

She clenched her fists tight and drove them into her skull, trying to dig the alien lives out. And that failed, so she laid back and let go.

She gave in.

A moment later, the door scraped open and Unohana gestured to her quietly. "Come, Masaki. It's time to say goodbye."

"To who?" she asked, levering herself up on aching arms. "Where are we going?"

"You need to say farewell to Ichioku Gyokusai. You may never meet your zanpakuto again."

**o)0(o**

And a short while later, as she lay in a kido-induced sleep upon an operating table in Fourth, Masaki stepped into her inner world, the one she had not dared approach in months, and let the pouring rain drench her to the bone, and peered at the blooming acres in the clouded darkness, and felt the sharp edge of her zanpakuto spirit against her bare feet.

"Gyokusai," she said quietly, inaudible amongst the roaring downpour.

"You gave me everything, every strength and fortitude a person could ever need. You changed yourself to help me cope with the Soul Awakening, and I never had a truer friend in battle. I don't know what I'll do without you, but if I can survive, then perhaps one day we'll meet again. I hope we do."

Scintillating diamond dust dancing in the air briefly, whipped away by the gale. It was a farewell.

Then and only then did Masaki allow herself to lose consciousness – she did not want to be aware when the blade of Minazuki fell.

When her powers were ripped from her soul, it would dwarf every other sensation in her life.

**o)0(o**

She awoke and felt empty. A hollow shell: with just the one mind bouncing aimlessly inside a body that had stretched to fit several more. She felt at peace, yet so, so lonely. And weakness seemed to have settled into her, spreading out from her heart through which the incision had been cut.

Mayuri leaned over her, grunted, and began popping cables and sensors off her arms and face.

"What are you doing here, fukutaicho?" asked the woman suspiciously. She had never acknowledged his rise to captain, had never wished to admit that Urahara Kisuke had been exiled.

"Oh, you think no one will notice the absence of a third seat from the Tech division? And such a flashy one at that? I've been building a memory suppressor that will wipe you out of sight and mind for weeks! It's bigger than this room! I don't know why we didn't just strip your brain out and use you as a battery...such a waste of resources so that you can live a normal life? Imbecilic."

"Then why agree to help?"

The captain rolled his yellow eyes as if agreeing with the lack of logic. "It _would_ be one of the conditions placed on myself by Urahara, wouldn't it? You will be living in Karakura town from now on."

"What? I thought I'd move out to Rukongai!"

"Idiot!" he mocked her, smacking her forehead with the heel of his palm. "Visual triggers to undo this entire charade, just sauntering round Rukongai? No! You will live in Karakura, mete out a pitiful human existences, then die and we will have done with you! Your operation has been performed by Unohana, Urahara will provide you with employment and a gigai specially modified, blah blah blah. I've lost a valuable generator here! Now I have to rely on that brainless streak of muscle Zaraki! I am not pleased! But all well and good if Tech doesn't foot the bill for your numerous cataclysms anymore. Ugh. Get up and get out the senkai before I skin you alive. Out of my sight, trash."

**o)0(o  
**

In the quiet streetlit night of Karakura, Masaki stood in front of the Urahara shouten and accepted a specially modified gigai from her former captain. She felt adrift, barely sinking in to her new situation. And Ichioku Gyokusai was absent, a silent void in the back of her mind.

Lost in avoidance of thought, she rested on the wall, feeling the cold stone through the gigai's modern skirt that was nowhere near so cosy as her faithful shihakusho. The textures of the real world were different to Seireitei, where there was always a slight fizz of soul-touching-soul. Here it was a little more numb, yet gritty and unmistakeably present. Of course, damage no longer depended on having higher reiatsu, a wound was a wound, and blades could cut.

She could not remember the last time she had been so vulnerable, so alone. But her habitual confidence remained, safe in the knowledge that she could out-manoeuvre any thug to cross her path. Urahara wouldn't give her a fragile gigai, would he?

Masaki sighed, looked up past the streetlights' glare to the clear night sky above. One or two stars glittered, most hidden by city fumes. She would have to locate a job and a new home and build a new life from scratch. Make friends from strangers; find a new pattern to fit in to, having lost everything from her afterlife.

And then...?

She hummed to herself loosely, folding her arms and dipping her head in thought.

Without a grand mission such as defending the world from Hollows or aiding Urahara in his strange experiments, what was she supposed to do?

In fleeting real-world lives, what filled that gap?

**o)0(o**

Lost in transition, she didn't notice the jaunty whistling until its source was almost beside her.

Cue the fool.

Hiding in the orange glow of a lamp, her knight in shining armour had arrived, throwing down the gauntlet of commitment with nary a hesitation in his sauntering step.

She raised an eyebrow . "Stalker."

He was appalled, heartbroken.

"But Masaki-chan!"

"Why are you here?"

"I..." He waved his hands vaguely, at a loss. "I looked around at my captaincy, my squad, my friends, my home...and none of it seemed to fit right anymore. Without you in the picture, at least glaring at me from near the frame, or something..."

She regretted her harsh words. But still, he hadn't been invited. "Just...head back, Kurosaki. This kind of life wouldn't suit you. I'm only doing it because I had no choice."

He fidgeted.

"Actually it's a bit late for that. I um, got Kurotsuchi to include me in the memory suppression kido,"

She stared.

"Matsumoto has also eradicated me from all of Soul Society's records, at the same time as she deleted you. She swore that she would never look at another piece of paperwork again,"

Her mouth dropped open.

"...which means she'll make life pretty hellish for that clever kid from my squad who'll be replacing me as captain...I mean, he has ice dragons and white hair and achieved a captaincy in a tenth of the time I did, the brat, can you believe it?"

Masaki began to stutter.

"Not to mention, these reiatsu-sapping gigai Kisuke developed are pretty damn efficient. I could take it off right now and still be useless for a month, I hope he doesn't plan to make more of them. Dangerous stuff."

"You-!" she blurted, almost bursting into tears. "Can't you give me a break? In the entire century? Please?"

Isshin sidled closer, a definite 'no'. "Well, it's tough to start a new life, right? I'm a medical expert with decades of experience. I figured I could get a job as a doctor and support you, and then you could do whatever you liked..."

"I...I haven't even begun to realise what I've lost yet...the only thing I got to keep was my life and sanity. You haven't considered this at all, when was the last time you were alive? The world's moved on, we'll have to adapt!"

Isshin fell silent, and miraculously, began to think. He leaned against the wall, in a pool of amber light, slowly slumping further and further until the pressure of responsibility seemed to floor him.

"I'll have to take up smoking to cope with the stress," he muttered to himself, not looking at her. He fished a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of his tuxedo pocket, well prepared.

And as the white tip of the deathstick singed into heat and a golden glow, she realised she didn't have a clue what he was thinking. For a brief moment, the idiot whose heart was usually written across his sleeve became a mystery, showing a deeper side than she'd known him capable of.

"You look cool when you smoke," she said, the words falling out automatically, by accident.

He choked, lost all air of savoir faire and turned to her with sparkling eyes. "That's the first compliment you've ever given me!" he trilled, delighted.

"And the last," she vowed, but a smile chased her slip. "You should try being serious a little more often. It suits you."

"Ahh, but Masaki-chan," he corrected her quickly; "these are times when you'll need cheering up!"

"Perhaps," she said with a soft grin, trying to remember what she had been fretting over moments before.

Silence resumed, as they both took in the sky through their synthetic eyes, and wondered how human Urahara could make them become. He'd been reticent with the designs, but Masaki knew her ex-captain well and suspected genetic research and other illegal methods had played a part.

"So what was it you used to say?" asked the newly remade woman brightly. "One beautiful baby girl and a garden full of flowers?"

Isshin's reaction was indescribable.

**o)0(o**

"That's a boy," pointed out Masaki, two years later, cradling the ginger baby in her arms. It had only taken a century or two of battle in the frontlines for her to build up a sufficient pain threshold to find labour bearable. Though she'd still managed to break one or two of her husband's fingers in a death grip.

"A boy, a boy, a son!" The man was ecstatic through his tears as he splinted and bandaged his left hand. "But we were aiming for a girl, right?" noted Masaki.

"Better luck next time?" he asked hopefully.

She nearly threw the baby at him.

**o)0(o**

"OH MY DEITY OF CHOICE!" yelled Isshin when he met his partner in the medical students' placement. "YOU'RE A QUI-"

Ryuuken gagged the man with a stethoscope and held a loaded syringe threateningly close to his neck. "Keep your mouth shut, shinigami, or I'll break my Hippocratic Oath just for you."

"Hey hey! You're that Quincy! THAT ONE! You're the guy who shoots our powers out without killing us. Actually, we stole your idea to save my wife's life, so I'm really pleased to meet you in real world life! Don't sweat the war, kay? Let's be buddies!" Isshin began to mumble incoherently about anaesthetic and slumped to the floor.

Ishida Ryuuken place the empty syringe carefully into the biohazard bin, and then nudged the shinigami under an empty bed,

"Did you hear what he said?" asked one patient to another once the dangerous doctor had left.

"I think he called him a queer!" hissed back the other.

**o)0(o**

"Maybe this was more luck than we were intending," cooed Masaki, one twin girl in each arm. She adored her children. Every time they smiled she forgot more and more about her afterlife, each and every time they hugged her she became happier to be alive again. Children were incredibly rare in Seireitei.

This was the first time she'd known what she was missing out on.

Isshin just grinned with helpless pride at their surgeon-midwife, Ryuuken, who couldn't bring himself to puncture the moment of joy with a reminder that he really, really was not associated with the Kurosakis in any way, shape or form.

**o)0(o**

And here Isshin's story ended. Abruptly.

Yuzu and Ichigo watched each other with trembling heartbeats, they knew what came next.

That the very thing that saved their mother's soul had also left her defenceless when a Hollow came calling.

"Couldn't you have done _anything?_" repeated Ichigo one last, hopeless time.

"I've killed the Grand Fisher," said Isshin gravely. "But that's all I could do. Years too late. I discarded my human body for a regular gigai not long after you met Rukia, but it's taken till now for my strength to return. I lived in that thing for twenty years. I can't teach you anything Ichigo, your reiatsu doesn't work the same way mine does; it's an inheritance from Masaki alone. Kido will never work for you. And if I came out of hiding to do my part in the war, what would Yuzu do? She'd have lost everyone to ghosts she can't even see. I will never ask for your forgiveness, Ichigo, because I've failed all of us. But that's the way life is. We only learn how truly weak we are when there's nothing we can do to help it."

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	27. La Muerte Del Diablo

**Hell Butterfly**

**La Muerte del Diablo**

**~27~**

**o)0(o**

"Your mother trusted me, Kurosaki –kun."

"Well we've all made that mistake," replied Ichigo dryly. "I wonder why people keep falling for your tricks."

Urahara looked offended from beneath his hat, seated in the shadowy interior of his shop. "I never did wrong by her. I give people what they need at the time. The consequences are not my fault."

"It doesn't work that way, you know."

"Ten years may seem like a blip of time to a shinigami, but it enabled her to be her own self again and bring three children whom she adored into the world. Yuzu. Karin. You."

Ichigo paused, withdrawn. He shook his head regretfully. "A Minor Hollow murdered her when she'd been so invincible before. I almost felt better not knowing it could have been helped."

Kisuke's morose expression showed that he agreed, yet he argued on regardless. "You've already given your life for your friends before. I expect you despise them since that sacrifice, hm?"

"No but-"

"Ichigo," Chad cut in, clapping a heavy hand upon the boy's shoulder that almost made his knees buckle. "You still have a father, a sister, a home, and many friends. You've never had to move countries or live alone. Even my abuela is gone, but that's part of life, not some curse that falls on shinigami alone. It's what happens."

The Kurosaki winced guiltily. Somehow, being a reaper himself had been the very thing to make him forget that obvious fact.

"At least we have ways to fight it. At least we know what comes next. Don't you think you're more fortunate than all the people who live in fear of the unknown?"

"Well, I never lived in fear of it," remarked Ichigo in bland tones, scratching his head. "I could always see ghosts."

Urahara coughed delicately. "So why am I graced with your presence today, Hitsugaya-taicho?"

The diminutive captain folded his arms and grumbled at great length. The grumble contained an explanation along the lines of 'Ichigo wants to remove the memory suppression, and apparently he is a pureblood shinigami, which makes it harder to deny him casual access – but mainly I am sick and tired of the lies surrounding everything in Seireitei; which besides making it easier for Aizen to manipulate us, has sorely compromised our ability to work cohesively recently, so I will be opening a council of war focusing on training and battle strategies once I have escorted these two through the gate'.

Kisuke blinked. The boy was more moody than Yoruichi with a three-day hangover. "Okay."

Meanwhile, Ichigo had an ulterior motive and for that he needed Chad as a distraction. He muttered a plan in his friend's ear as they clambered down to Urahara's basement. "Just...do something that will draw attention. Go somewhere you're not supposed to. I just want their attention off me for half an hour or so. I would've asked Ishida, but he's not really in a good mood with me at the moment."

Chad had no idea what Ichigo was aiming for, but given that he was the least-offending member of the ryokas, he would get the lightest punishment for acting out of turn.

"Un," he agreed eloquently, causing Ichigo to face palm.

"Okay. So first I need to go into Twelfth Division to switch off that memory suppressor, then I'll give you a signal or something, and then we'll meet up back at the senkai. Okay?"

"Un."

Hitsugaya just watched them, a permanent scowl of irritation gracing his child-like face. "Ichigo...if you plan to make a ruckus, can you at least not plot it where I can hear you? I really don't want to be forced to chaperone you every time you come to Seireitei." Internally, he was more than a little worried about Ichigo's plan to disappear. He wanted to know where the boy was at all times so that he could prevent any contact with Tenebra Shirojos. The thought of Kurosaki knowing his sister was chained up in the Shrine of Penitence was almost enough to make him break into a cold sweat.

The door to another dimension peeled open, and Urahara waved them through with a sarcastic flourish.

**o)0(o**

Ichigo sauntered into the Twelfth Division sector and waited to be caught. He didn't have a clue where he was going, so the best thing to do would be to let someone drag him into the main offices in a fit of rage. That usually worked.

Of course, he was a little worried when Kurotsuchi himself turned up with Byakuya in tow.

"Hi," waved Ichigo, feigning nonchalance. He was not in deep shit, nosirree.

Byakuya sent him a frigid glare. Ichigo hid his hands behind his back like a guilty child.

"I need to see your memory suppression technology." he said to Mayuri, deciding to be direct and therefore spend as little time in the unsettling scientist's company as possible. Byakuya seemed to twitch slightly. He must have imagined it.

"We know," yawned Kurotsuchi, bored already. "Hitsugaya informed us. He seemed rather shocked, too. I wonder what it could be,"

Ichigo just curled his mouth up in a half smile and shrugged. He'd been a little too thrown to notice Hitsuhgaya's reaction to the unexpected return of his old Taicho, his former, insane commanding officer, but it seemed the kid was rattled for all his icy exterior. …That didn't explain why Kuchiki-taicho had to accompany them, but he suspected that was so Kurostuchi didn't get too excited by the prospect of dissecting a Vaizard.

Hence he was unprepared when Byakuya blocked his path to the inner tech rooms.

"You will swear to touch nothing before we proceed."

"Why?" asked Ichigo coolly, "Do you have secrets in that thing too?"

"Oh?"

"You know, maybe it would do Seireitei a favour if we just blew the lid off the thing. Didn't Aizen take advantage of all the secrets around here to rebel?"

"Don't presume, Kurosaki," hissed Byakuya in a brittle voice. His sword was at Ichigo's throat before the boy could blink. "You will not interfere beyond your own business, understood? Certainly, if your father really is a rogue shinigami, it's his choice to reveal that. But there are other matters being kept in here that you have no right to even be aware of. Besides, I don't know how it can benefit you to throw your family into further jeopardy by revealing their secrets to the Soutaicho."

The redhead stared down the length of the blade with a bizarre expression on his face, as if he didn't trust Byakuya's hand not to 'accidentally' slip. "I won't really believe what he's told me until I see a few more people verify it. My dad told me he was a captain, and that my mother was part of this Twelfth Squad and some kind of crazy Zaraki-level power source. Wouldn't you need a little more evidence to swallow that? I mean, he's a complete _idiot._"

"What are their names?"

"Kurosaki Isshin and Masaki." Ichigo watched this fail to ring a bell. "You'll know soon enough, I guess."

"I can't wait." answered Byakuya dryly, almost making the substitute fall over in shock. THAT WAS HIS SECOND JOKE. EVER!

**o)0(o**

The sound of a few thousand voices screaming in conjoined terror and pain echoed across Seireitei. Yamamoto leaned heavily upon his desk, cradling his scarred head in his wrinkled old hands, beads of sweat trickling down his brow.

Perhaps he should have issued a public warning before allowing the population's memories of Isshin to be reinstated. It was distinctly disorientating.

Sitting back up once the tide of recollection had passed – (Isshin singing karaoke during an officer's meeting, Isshin dancing a jig round the Central Offices after hearing about his promotion, Isshin attempting to perform stand-up comedy in the medical emergencies wing of the hospital, Isshin mobbing his own division's barracks in order to teach them the element of surprise…) – the Soutaicho sighed heavily and made a note to offer free therapy sessions in apology for the inconvenience.

**o)0(o**

An alarm began to sound and Toushiro sighed, waving the panicking subordinates aside. "I'll deal with it," he growled, amazed by the sheer nerve of Chad in heading to Soukyoku Hill to cause a disruption. Sure, it wasn't Ichigo, so things might not get out of hand, but he'd never realised the stoic Mexican had such a knack for choosing the perfect way to cause trouble.

Then again, he might be able to twist this to his advantage, as Sado Yasutora was the least likely of his friends to act in haste.

"Sado," called Hitsugaya, dwarfed by the teenager, and looking extremely pale beside the human's natural tan. "What are you doing up here?"

"I wondered why the shrine was covered in scorch marks," explained Yasutora, inspired to be more vocal by the presence of an authority figure, albeit one half his height. Toushiro pulled a strange face.

"The reason for that is something Kurosaki absolutely must not be made aware of," started Hitsugaya, but then experienced the rare event of being interrupted by Chad.

"There seems to be a strong Hollow presence hanging around here. I was trying to place it, I've felt it before."

"Since when did you have a talent for sensing reiatsu trails?"

"I don't..." said the boy, troubled. "Only with Hollows..." His connection to Hollows went deep, that was the only thing he was sure of.

Toushiro coughed and walked around the side of the shrine, nodding at the doubled guards as he passed, and picked up a small wooden crate. He brought it back to the gateway into the tower, dared Sado to say a word, and placed it on the ground, hopping up and peering through the eye slits in the door with the added height of his box.

"In here," growled the captain. "Take a look, but don't react at all."

**o)0(o**

Chad peered through the dark gap and stumbled back, catching on to the fence of the bridge for support. The last time he had seen that person, she had reduced his best friend, her own near-undefeated brother, to a few shreds of bloody red meat.

Strung between the walls of the cylindrical tower by four crimson leashes, her hands and arms bound in a white straitjacket and her throat collared, motionless head staring down at the ground as the sapping property of the sekiseki drained her of all energy and motion...

"Karin!" he shouted under his breath, however unreal it seemed to be. When had they captured her? How?

"She just walked into Soul Society, through the Garganta Matsumoto left open. She was following the Hell Butterfly that carried Rangiku's last words back to us. I was the one who fought her-" _fled, more like,_ muttered the back of his mind "-and trapped her in here. Sado Yasutora, you are under no circumstances to inform the Kurosaki family of this. We have yet to ascertain what to do with Espada Zero, and we can't afford to have Ichigo rampaging into this delicate situation. Also, the only reason I have shown you this is that I want you to dissuade Kurosaki Ichigo of coming anywhere near this place. Should anything happen to indicate her presence, you will be the one to cover it up to the best of your abilities. We know that he trusts you and never questions you. If you disagree to our request, there will be terrible consequences, simply through him finding out. You should agree that this is of the utmost importance."

Chad nodded mutely. Tenebra Shirojos was petrifying. There was no way in hell he would contribute to her escape. His dark eyes traced the hefty gate again. That it could contain her… left him in cold, wary disbelief.

Byakuya alighted upon the wooden bridge behind him, making the boy nearly fall over the side in shock.

"Hitsugaya -taicho," he interrupted. "Kurosaki's whereabouts – do you know?"

"I warned you not to let him approach this area. You had better hope I_ don't_ know."

"He appeared to give myself and Kurotsuchi -taicho the slip when we were disorientated by the de-suppression of memories."

Toushiro screwed his eyes up and scrubbed at them tiredly. "It does make your IQ drop a bit, to remember Isshin-taicho, doesn't it?"

"Quite," said Byakuya with faint amusement. "Masaki was also somewhat of an unpleasant surprise. It is surprising that we could be made to forget one so destructive as she."

"Mmhmm," laughed Hitsugaya slightly. His face fell as he once again saw the prisoner. "We'd better locate Ichigo."

"His spirit thread cut off abruptly, I assume he either used some device borrowed from the exile or went into a shielded area."

"I'll wait for him by the senkai gate," rumbled Chad. "He'll head that way eventually."

As he moved off, a thrill of danger shot electric down his spine.

He whipped round to face a Garganta carving itself from thin air. This was no Twelfth Squad imitation, this was the real, raw deal. A fracture in their defences, a genuine invasion.

And the reiatsu flooding out was yet again, hauntingly familiar...

The figure that emerged from the slit in reality was tall, pale and buzzing with repressed energy. Some instinct told his audience that the arrancars were now stronger than ever, and even Toushiro hesitated to attack.

Byakuya did not give the demon room to speak, striking out with Senbonzakura. The whirling blades were deflected by a wave of reiatsu and a flick of the Espada's wrist.

"I am Coyote Starrk, the Primera Espada. Do you really think shikai can harm me?"

"More like 'Did you really expect Aizen-sama to let his best soldier just wander off?'! Honestly Starrk," lectured Lilynette, scornful and obnoxious. "Are you too lazy to even remember why we came here?"

"Probably," grinned the Espada, followed by a jaw-cracking yawn. "Let's get this over quickly, alright? Where's the Zero?"

"As if we'd just hand her over," ridiculed Hitsugaya, painfully aware she was right behind him. "We are not so stupid nor so suicidal."

"Yeah," snorted the female. "But you don't have the sense to get out of our way, do you?" She lashed out with her zanpakuto and Toushiro skidded backwards out of range, a trail of ice chasing his unsheathed sword.

There was an ear-popping crack as Starrk appeared behind Byakuya in Sonido, and blocked the captain's sword from sinking into the ground in preparation for bankai. "Seems like she's in this shoddy tower," muttered the Primera, and whacked the Kuchiki over the head. His attacks were abrupt and effective, wasting no time or movement. "But I can't get a hold on her reiatsu...like some kind of negacion. Is it this stone?"

There was no reaction from within the tower at his presence. "OI TENEBRA! WAKE UP!" shouted the Hollow, turning away from the reeling Byakuya to break down the door of the Shrine.

But someone was in his way.

A terrifying rictus outlined in dark red over deepest black blocked his minor Cero; the energy skated away without burning its surface. A chalk-white arm streaked in geometric crimson veins caught his wrist and twisted. Starrk was flung away: recovering in moments, but still it was the lowest he'd been brought in time out of mind.

Starrk shook out his wrist, staring at Sado Yasutora consideringly. The human looked fierce with resolve, yet the armoured skin seemed to be spreading to his face and torso. It was something to do with the savage reiatsu bubbling around the Primera Espada, it was triggering his own, causing a reflexive retaliation.

Sado was worried.

He was becoming engulfed by his own skin - the skin that wasn't quite his, the armour that belonged on the back of a -

"Hollow." said Coyote Starrk. "I remember your mark, La Muerte. Saw it in Las Noches. Nostalgic, wasn't it, Lilynette?"

"What?" snapped the girl, thrashing out at Toushiro once again, who was pleased to be fighting someone of his own size. It made many manoeuvres easier. She flung a glance over her shoulder.

"Oh!"

She fell still, dodging Hitsugaya's volleys with the bare minimum of attention.

"It's him..."

A moment later she was next to her leader, squinting at Chad.

"He got dropped by that powerful dude with the Soukyoku, right? Hundreds of years ago. He looks so small now!"

"Well, a human is quite a step down for a former Vasto Lorde..."

Yasutora just stared at them in silence, mind whirling, fearful of the clay-like substance beginning to submerge his face.

Former Hollow? That did explain his powers - but - why would they have been buried in his soul all this time?

Byakuya and Toushiro waited for the meaning of this turn of events to become clear. There was a feeling of impasse in the air, despite there being no outward signs of a checkmate. Starrk paid them no mind, uncommonly relaxed for an invasion force of two.

"Do you remember that when we were alone in the deserts of Hueco Mundo, you were the only other being that could survive our presence? For heartless beings, I'd even say we were friends."

"What?" choked out Sado. He couldn't form anything more coherent than that.

Lilynette looked him up and down gravely. "That white hand of yours is one I used to hold, dumbass. That Hollow's skin on your arms is your past catching up with you. When it covers you completely, I wonder if you'll lose your heart again too." Her smile was sudden and vicious.

"I-"

"You were a Vasto Lorde of the highest calibre once upon a time, Muerte." Starrk said that familiar, foreign name again. "When you go that far into darkness, it stains your soul forever."

Yasutora could feel the truth in their words, heavy and implacable. Hueco Mundo had felt like home during their rescue of Orihime, its atmosphere had strengthened him. Starrk's reiatsu was familiar, Lilynette's voice sent little kicks of memory through his soul. And the black and white skin was shifting, swallowing him in its jagged red lines. He made no attempt to deny it.

"But I am not a hollow anymore," he answered resolutely, straight to the point. "I was reborn."

"How long do you think that will last?" asked Lilynette smugly, touching a hand to his ribs where his hole once was. His heart jumped in a fit of pain. He screamed sharp and short, brought to his knees by the reminder of unimaginable desolation.

"Don't be cruel," chided Starrk. "He's lucky to be alive again, don't you think? Las Noches isn't that much fun. At least they have cinemas and stuff in the real world."

"But he doesn't want to know us anymore, Coyote, he's trying to blow us off. That's harsh."

Chad looked to the two captains desperately, they made no move to aid him, busy racing through the scripts of top-level kido under their breaths. But the sense of drowning, being buried under the spider-crawl of his Hollow transformation was scaring the living daylights out of him, literally. They wasn't fast enough. They wouldn't be able to save him from the spread of his old disease.

"LA MUERTE!" roared Yasutora, shooting a burning white fist forward in a cannon-blast of reiatsu. His former companions were tossed away, the bridge obliterated, a grimacing skull with a crown of wavy spines gouged out of the mountainside. The human stared at the cruel visage, its empty eyes and fleshless grin, for the first time seeing it for what it truly was.

A mirror.

Barely flinching, Byakuya and Toushiro completed their incantations and a wall of white light shot up around the Shrine, hiding the target within entirely.

As one, they caught their breaths and waited for the clouds of choking grey dust to settle.

**o)0(o**

Coyote Starrk hauled himself halfway over the cliff edge and hung there, blowing a bedraggled lock of hair out of his face. "Well, that's me beat. Let's head back!"

Clinging to his foot, Lilynette berated him. "You're not even scratched!"

"Not at all, I was severely wounded in the blast…"

"You're bone idle!"

The Espada dropped his pretence and let go, levitating in mid-air under his own power. Lilynette floated up beside him and crossed her arms angrily.

"I have _no idea_ why Aizen-sama bothers to trust you. You're useless!"

"Strategic," he corrected her. "We're being asked to rescue a mindless killing machine that Aizen _can't control_, from a reiatsu-draining fortress in the epicentre of the shinigami army. Which, by the way, is already guarded by two captains and a former Vasto Lorde who once had strength on a par with our old forms. Plus that big shiny white kido barrier is really starting to hurt my eyes."

The blonde girl grumbled and looked away. He had a point. "Shirojos was a liability from the start, anyway."

"Exactly. Let's just leave her here, until one of them pisses her off and she goes on a murderous rampage and destroys Seireitei from within."

"Sounds good to me," whistled his Fraccion, reopening the Garganta with a click of her small fingers. Her shoulders drooped a little. "…But…"

"Hm?"

"Kind of feel like we should say goodbye to Muerte…"

Coyote pushed her towards the tunnel, voice mocking. "You can give him a present whilst you're at it."

Lilynette punched his arm extremely hard, then suffered a brainwave. "I know! I know the perfect thing!"

**o)0(o**

Chad dropped back into a battle stance as the two arrancars approached him for the second time. He sent slightly panicked glances towards the two captains, wondering why they refused to re-engage the enemy.

"Here," mumbled Lilynette abruptly, dropping something into the human's Hollow hands. "It's a gift from us. Maybe you'll remember your old half-life one day."

Quite certain that remembering such a thing would drive him insane; Sado nodded dumbly and looked at what she'd given him.

There was a moment of silence.

"It's so cute!" said Chad, surprised into speech.

The Hollows laughed at him, a surreal experience. "You haven't changed at all. Well, perhaps you don't _eat_ the cute things anymore," cackled Lilynette.

"It's a Hollow Gecko named Morff. Can survive anything, but don't let him eat your friends. Enjoy!" said Starrk, with a casual salute in farewell. "And take good care of the Zero for us so she can murder you all later."

"BYE MUERTE!" cried the Fraccion, waving energetically as they strolled back into the depths of the Garganta.

The little gecko tilted its bone head and cheeped at Chad sweetly.

"…So cute!" he whispered again, cradling it in his inhuman palms.

Byakuya and Toushiro simply stared in incomprehension.

**o)0(o**

"Yo, Chad!" called Ichigo as he jogged up the hill to the Shrine, hopped over the smashed bridge with a burst of reiatsu and skidded to a halt next to his friend. "What are you doing up here?"

"Repelling an Espada invasion," replied Sado, preoccupied with something small and chirping in his hands. Ichigo blinked, taking that on board.

"That's one hell of a distraction…"

"Mn. It was the Primera and…" Side-tracked by the undead Gecko, he trailed off and ended with: "…And that's how it went."

"Right," said Ichigo, a sweat drop rolling down his head in exasperation. There was literally nothing he could think to say in response to such news. "Well, I've got what I needed," he hefted a bag over his shoulder that was as big as he was. "And half of Soul Society is suffering the headache known as 'remembering my parents existed'. So I'm ready to go if you are."

"…" Chad looked at the Shrine for a moment, still encased in a gleaming white wall of kido, and thought about how Ichigo stood not ten metres away from his sister, and how easy it would be for them to shatter that single obstacle and reach her and then…what? What could they do?

He could sense the low-burning fire in his best friend's eyes, that steel promise to grow ever stronger and rescue Karin. That vow to never let his allies be stolen again. If he knew that Espada Zero was right here, would he be able to make the next leap in his evolution?

"…I'm finished…" he replied belatedly, and let Ichigo drag him into the air for a shortcut to the senkai gates.

Ignoring the guilt that gnawed at his back.

**o)0(o**

**Bloomake!**

**o)0(o**

Starrk: That Hollow hand of yours is one I used to hold.  
Chad: I…I didn't realise you felt that way…  
Byakuya: There are no prizes for strangest crack pairing! Stop!  
Toushiro: Excuse me whilst I scrub this memory from my brain with an old toothbrush…  
Lilynette: Guys, let's leave that dialogue to me next time, yeah?

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

Ichigo: OW! YOUR PET JUST BIT ME! …WHY IS YOUR PET A HOLLOW?  
Chad: It's cute?  
Ichigo: It's not cute, it's a spy! It's a trap! What did I tell you about accepting haunted pets again?  
Chad: Stop scaring Morff. If you go into Vaizard mode, it'll probably like you.  
Ichigo: Bet you ten thousand yen it eats us in our sleep. *Masks up*  
Morff: _cheep!_  
Ichigo: …Aww. Can we keep it?

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	28. Azure Oblivion

**Hell Butterfly**

**Azure Oblivion**

**~28~**

**o)0(o**

"_Sado-!_"

**o)0(o**

Inoue, Chad and Ishida had gathered near the park in a neglected field to train and hone their powers. It seemed Ichigo would not be joining them, as he had vanished that morning to locate the vaizards.

"These are your friends?"

Ishida, Inoue and Sado all spun round in mild horror. They had thought the field they practised in was private and unnoticed. A thin, middle-aged man with pure white hair was staring at them; he wore glasses and a pristine doctor's coat. His stance was stiff and unpleasant. A paler version of Uryuu.

He took in Orihime's fairies with little concern, but his face clouded over as it turned to Chad's inhuman arms. "And what are _you_?" he wondered under his breath, distasteful.

The moment of shock over, Uryuu affected to ignore his father, and continued to drill countless arrows into a nearby tree. At that second it looked like termites had invaded the bark. Soon it would be dust.

"I prefer your sewing." The compliment came like an insult. "That at least is a talent a surgeon can be proud of."

"I cannot progress into medical college any faster than I am already doing," replied the Quincy through gritted teeth. It sounded like an old, exhausted argument.

In the following awkward silence, Orihime and Yasutora shrugged at each other. Neither of them had needed to deal with parents in many years. Probably nothing they could say would help.

"Come here," said Ishida Ryuuken curtly. "I shall teach you something."

"What?" asked Uryuu suspiciously.

"For you, it could turn the entire war around."

**o)0(o**

Uryuu held the bow taut, pitting all the strength in his right arm into restraining the torrent of power. The concept had been simple – fire the thousands of arrows per second as a single bolt. The end result would be something like rapid fire spirit swords.

But the saying was far easier than the doing.

The blue string of light was cutting deep into his fingertips, blood making his grip slipperier by the second. The arrow continually made miniscule jumps away from him. The bow seemed fit to snap under its own pressure; for all that it had no material form.

His father, always as cold and unfeeling as surgical steel, observed that the bolt was almost ready. Rather that it would tear his son apart if compressed any longer.

"You will need to fletch the energy; it is too powerful to fly straight as the others do. Mould the base until it forms spiral flight feathers. When it spins upon release; that shall stabilise its path and further increase its speed. It will also prevent it from exploding and hitting unintended targets with escaping splinters."

Uryuu hissed in concentration, sweat pouring down his face. Fletch? He hadn't needed to fletch since Grandfather first taught him to summon a child's bow! And he had never attempted such a complex design. With agonising slowness, yet surety, a whorl of spines appeared.

Ryuuken did not smile as his prodigy progeny pushed the limits of the Quincy tribe yet again. So the boy was a genius?

He would learn to regret that, if he never woke up to the truth.

"Aim! Fifty-seven degrees! Don't breath, fire between heartbeats! Release it!"

Waiting for a moment of perfect stillness with bated breath, Uryuu let go.

He barely saw the flash.

The air-ripping sonic boom seemed to arrive much too late, atmosphere billowing with the arrow's passage.

Uryuu staggered slightly, dousing the sky-coloured fires of his bow and glancing at his flayed hands. "How far is it going to go?"

"Who knows?" replied Ryuuken quietly.

"What is the target?"

"Who will it hit?" mimicked the ex-Quincy as calmly as the grave. "You had better consider that _before_ you unleash such a weapon."

The Last Quincy gaped at his mentor, felt his soul twist in pre-emptive guilt, and began to run.

**o)0(o**

Ishida Uryuu was experiencing a new emotion as he chased his missile of death across the quiet dusk city.

Panic.

Chaos.

Terror.

In life, he was accustomed to approaching situations with calm strategy, viewing all the angles, measuring the balance of power and predicting the odds with near-surgical accuracy. He had pushed himself close to the point of death before, yes, but never had he lost control.

Never had he not known where an arrow would land.

And as the suburbs gave way to grass and the hill he raced up dipped into a small valley-like play park, as the scenery grew more and more familiar, so the whirlwind in his ordered mind grew.

As he drew closer and closer past the swings, beyond the trees, into the deserted meadow; beyond the public places – Ishida caught sight of that which he had never wanted to see, and felt the will to keep running abruptly leave him. His legs drifted to a stop, chest heaving from the burst of adrenaline that had brought him this far.

He could see Inoue. He could see the bubble of light surrounding her. And that was surely…_he could barely bring himself to think it, gulping and turning his eyes away_…trying to avoid the truth.

That was probably Sado-kun on the ground, lying there beneath her fairies' healing influence. He had probably been…mutilated, shredded by the arrow Uryuu had so unwittingly, purposefully unleashed.

He couldn't bear to look.

He wished he could turn back time as Inoue was doing now, make it so he had never trusted his distant father, never turned a weapon against his own friends. What could he possibly say to them? Couldn't he prevent them from remembering this, somehow, erase the event from history?

The shame was crushing.

He wanted to run away.

Slow-moving footsteps clicked behind him. Even the way his father walked could sound stern and unforgiving. The man's son was trembling. Lost.

Rather, losing all trust in his father, for the first time realising that he really could not trust this man, who was meant to be his first port of call in trouble, yet forever played the unreachable doctor: who merely provided food and lodging for his family and never, ever emotional support.

He had probably restored the boy's powers solely for the satisfaction of ripping his will to use them away again like this. Finally, finally Uryuu found the words.

"_What did you make me do?_" he half-wailed, that chaos still with him catching in the throat. _What have I done, what have I done?_

"If Orihime-chan wasn't here, Sado-kun would be dead! Why did you make this happen? You're insane! You're twisted and insane, you're a _doctor_ and you're killing my friends!"

"You're still the same foolish child you were all those years ago," meted out Ryuuken in a harsh voice utterly devoid of emotion. "Still the same foolish child you were when you asked your grandfather to train you into a murderer."

"I have _never_ been a murderer! I have never killed anyone but Hollow monsters until you made me do this! You may as well have been the one to pull the trigger! I didn't know where I was aiming!"

"_Then why did you release it?_

"Why did you leave the responsibility for your own actions in the hands of another? Why did you thoughtlessly unleash an arrow of unknown magnitude into the heart of Karakura Town where it could have hit anything or anyone? Have you spent so long in Hueco Mundo and Soul Society that you _forgot_ that this is the real world, that people _live_ here? But that isn't what I wanted to teach you tonight. I wanted to teach you why I have always been so disappointed in you, and I make no lie about that fact."

"You never have," stated Uryuu coldly, wondering why this was all about his relationship with his father when what he should have been doing, what he was too scared to do, was to run over to Sado-kun and beg for forgiveness on hands and knees at the very second Orihime healed him and his eyes opened again.

"Forget this," he spat, making his decision not to be a coward. He had never been a coward in the past, he would not begin now. He would not hide from those he owed so badly.

Uryuu gritted his teeth, stamped down the boiling terror in his stomach and walked forwards. But a hard grip caught his arm, dragged him back, spun him round. His father stood before him, looking livid.

"Sado…will not be waking up. That girl hasn't the ability to reject a Quincy's killing," ground out the doctor through similarly gritted teeth. "And I am sorry that this is the only way to teach you the true weight of a Quincy's bow, and the _real_ wounds our arrows tear in the fabric of the universe. Sado has not simply _died_. He has been tossed into oblivion.

"You have been told many times, and you have ignored every time; every time you fired a single shot you have wilfully ignored the fact that when a Quincy kills, that victim is forced outside of the universe itself and left to drift in a nowhere realm – one from which it may never return. Furthermore it destroys the Balance of Souls, the final consequences of which I do not even wish to imagine. And _you_ with all your prodigious strength and intellect and _pride_ at being able to crush the laws of nature underfoot-! Do you realise that your former friend over there used to be a Hollow? That he was killed a long time ago, most likely at the blade of a shinigami in the proper order of things? That a zanpakuto purified his sins, cleansed him and made him whole again? It did not _eradicate_ him. But had he been killed by a Quincy, his existence would be over, and you never would have had that comrade.

"Now tell me this, Uryuu. How many have you sent to the same fate, without a single care? I bet you've lost count. Of how many you've murdered in calm, controlled, cold blood."

Uryuu felt sick. He wanted to throw up, and every time he tried to turn away from his father, he could not avoid the truth in those icy eyes. Relentless, unforgiving.

"Couldn't you have just told me this? Did you have to demonstrate it on my friends, did you have to wait so long before saying anything?" He tried to shift the guilt and blame he could not cope with onto the shoulders of another.

"You always knew. It is the first thing a Quincy learns. And usually the last thing they come to understand," hissed Ryuuken. "You have even explained it to Kurosaki in your own words. You have met and fought the scientist that experimented on and tortured generations of our tribe, once our crimes made us worth less than the souls of animals in the Soutaicho's eyes. You have seen it all and you have looked away. So I gave you a message you could never ignore.

"…Before you march blindly into a war you have no part in."

"Aizen might deserve it," muttered Uryuu in a last flare of resistance.

"Ah, excellent," said his father, dripping sarcasm. "The one person who deserves to be killed by a Quincy just so happens to be completely beyond our power."

His son stared at him hopelessly.

"Leave it to the reapers, Uryuu. You call yourself the last Quincy. I would like you to make that the truth."

**o)0(o  
**

Uryuu dragged himself away, sprinting the final distance to Inoue's side. To a former Hollow's grave.

"O-Orihime…chan…I am so, so sorry… My father made me- I didn't know where I was aiming, I mean, I have no excuse…" His voice cracked. "Please forgive me, Sado-kun…"

"Shhh," whispered Orihime gently, face and hands bathed in a warm glow. "He's asleep."

He wondered if she'd gone mad.

"But he won't be able to fight anymore," she added. Her deluded words only brought it closer to home. She didn't have the capability to drag his soul back into the world.

"Don't worry though, he'll wake up soon."

Uryuu crumpled to his knees beside them, his glasses cracking against the ground as they fell off.

"What's the matter?" she asked, turning to him, not wanting to ask why he had fired at them, yet still concerned for his health. The ash-grey tone of his skin said it all. "You didn't hit us," soothed the girl, suddenly understanding. She patted his arm briefly, too deep into her rejection to divert much attention. "You missed, Ishida-kun. What I'm doing now has nothing to do with you, it's just…"

She paused, dithering over the right word.

"Complicated."

**o)0(o**

"_Sado-!_" screamed Inoue, barely enough time to react as the light of oblivion torqued towards them out of nowhere.

Chad threw himself into its path, moved simply by the instinct to protect a friend and not thinking of the consequences that would befall him. There was an air-ripping explosion as the blazing blue arrow punched down like a bomb, razing all in its path to the ground, and churning that ground to dust.

"Sado-kun!" shrieked Inoue again, desperate and high-pitched. She looked behind her in a panic, auburn hair flying. "_Sado-kun, are you alright? Are you alive?_"

He stared at her in surprise – when had she moved in front of him? Hadn't he lunged to defend her? And then he realised she was silhouetted against a vast golden shield, a fierce rejection of the inevitable that was perhaps the only magic capable of deflecting a Quincy's blow. Heaven knew she didn't have the reiatsu to nullify it.

"Sado-kun, your face…" mumbled Orihime, mouth trembling. "You look…you look like Sora did…like Kurosaki-kun does when he…"

His wide brown eyes were all she could see past the mask that grew in a living curse over his head. His right arm's shield was larger, denser, perhaps it _could _have defended them. But was that worth the way scarlet-branded Hollow skin was burying him alive?

She was torn between rushing to his aid and watching out for the next attack – neither of them willing to consider the reason behind it.

In compromise she lengthened the shield, the amber triangle spreading out to cover them in a tent of light. Then she was at his side, gripping his sharp clawed hands, begging him to snap out of it. Slowly, the black-and-white hide receded, and his cocoa skin returned.

The increase in power had been obvious. His fear was tangible in the air, however, a dank black aura.

"Shall I…" choked out Inoue, stroking his brown hair almost helplessly; "…shall I…fix you?" It was bad enough that Ichigo was frequently overrun by an inner Hollow, but did she have to watch _two_ friends suffer the same fate? Ichigo was a powerhouse; she was scared to get in his way with her misgivings, to weaken the one who spearheaded their small band of spiritual vigilantes. But if she were honest, Sado Yasutora was peripheral, just like her. He didn't _have_ to go through this.

"I can't…continue to fight in this war, Inoue, by moving backwards and becoming weaker. Only people who can run forward will survive." It was the most she'd ever heard him say.

"I know, I know," she apologised, a tear seeping out. "I just want to help you! There's so little I can do, for anyone, and then if I'm not allowed to heal either, why am I here? I can't keep watching my friends turn into Hollows!"

Chad's head dropped down, sombre. "Not just a Hollow," he admitted, though he'd been keeping the secret of Starrk's invasion for fear of revealing Karin by implication. "I was told – I think I used to be…a Vasto Lorde…"

"…How?" whispered Orihime.

"To tell the truth…I have always known my soul was empty." His mind had flown back to a childhood of being a thug too dangerous to even be accepted into gangs. To the hot, dusty, and in his presence bloodthirsty streets of Mexico. "I was always silent, and violent," the teenager's voice was dark and low; "because there was so little in me to say."

She turned away, searching the sunset sky for incoming missiles and perhaps, answers.

"I'm sorry, Yasutora-kun," she said, meaning it with all her heart.

A gold cage wrapped around him. He tried to break it open but his hands were tossed back by the barrier with a shock of orange electricity. "Inoue!"

The timorous girl had suddenly become unyielding and impassable.

"I won't let you."

"But-!"

"I won't!" she screamed at him, as her power sunk into his bones and began to rewire his very soul. "I can't sit and watch this happen anymore! I've lived in Hueco Mundo, I know what it's like for them, I know how hopeless it is! I won't let you turn into that!"

Trapped, unable to fight her kindness, Sado was forced to helplessly have his powers stolen away.

**o)0(o**

"I used to be like you," said Uryuu's father. "Until the day a Hollow itself revealed the truth to me."

The beast lurked in the depths of the forests beyond Karakura's outskirts, mighty and haggard and old. He wondered what could have aged it when such power usually deflected the effects of time.

"A Quincy," it croaked, happy and showing it. "It takes a while to find one of you these days...all dead, aren't you?"

"And what did you want a Quincy for? Are you looking to finish off the shinigami's dirty work?" The young man, though his blue-black hair was salted with premature greys, snorted. "How demeaning."

"Not at all," laughed the heathen being. "I want to be finished off. I'm tired of life and death and every devil in-between. And you know, with a Quincy's help, I wouldn't even need to suffer another reincarnation. Oh, I left myself open to those shinigami, but the ones they send on patrol are weaaak, too weak to face me. And finally I find you. You don't mind do you?"

"Not at all," echoed Ryuuken, forming his bow and arrows from burning blue reiryoku and dispatching the Hollow with instantaneous efficiency.

It was only on his return that the words hit home.

"Never suffer another reincarnation,"

"Never..."

The black, twisted, ugly-as-truth thought swam in the back of his mind like a shark, hunting down all his pride and confidence and self-righteousness, shredding and devouring them with insatiable violence.

What...what had his tribe been doing?

To continue their heritage they had always made light of the Balance, and the consequences. 'We have eliminated those who lost their humanity, and we have saved those who deserved their lives.'

But now he couldn't stop thinking about it, round and round and round in a sickening giddy circle.

Hollows may warp, gorge upon, and tear apart other souls...but they never destroyed them.

Only Quincies destroyed them, utterly, a retaliation beyond all reason.

By the next day he had gathered together and burned all of his belongings, anything that smacked of twisted Quincy justice.

He kept the one cross for emergencies, but the rest went, all with a wary glance at his kind, loving, ruthless-in-battle father, and a new fear born for his as-yet innocent baby son.

So when that child grew to follow his father's regretted footsteps, the bitterness in Ryuuken overflowed.

**o)0(o**

The gang were arranged around Chad's apartment in varying states of indolence, just like any normal group of teenage friends, and there was a relaxed lilt in the atmosphere that none of them had experienced in a long time.

Ichigo was picking out simple bass lines on his neglected guitar, the beginner's level he had never progressed beyond; and Chad strummed complex melodies that reminded him of the quick, intricate music of his first home. Inoue and Ishida were seated at the table, chowing down store-bought snacks and arguing over the correct answers for their homework, being the first and second best students in Karakura High respectively. They had seldom remembered that they had intelligence in common, and on Monday their teachers would surely be overwhelmed by the glut of complicated terminology in the pair's work as they strove to outdo each other.

It was a moment of normality snatched from the teeth of war, and they found themselves yearning for it to continue forever. But no one who makes that wish has ever found it answered.

Eventually, Ichigo and Orihime bade their farewells and headed back to the Kurosaki Clinic.

Everyone felt the deeper cut than usual of that goodbye, as if they would never see each other in the same way again.

That they would no longer know their backs were covered by trusted nakama even in the depths of Hueco Mundo.

Ichigo sighed heavily as he slotted his key into the clinic's back door. The responsibility he felt to fight seemed to have tripled, though he was actually glad to know Chad and Ishida had more of a survival instinct than he did. But it was difficult to face the idea that from now on he would be completely alone, the only ryoka rebelling on the battlefield.

"Ichigo-kun," said Orihime quietly, as he rested his head against the cold door and groaned. The boy jumped, startled. He had forgotten she was behind him, just for a second. They shared a look in the shadowed porch.

"I haven't quit yet," she reminded him in a soft whisper. "So neither can you. Anything I can do, you can do about a million times better, right?"

"Yeah," laughed the substitute, relaxing. "Except science."

"Well, no one's perfect."

**o)0(o**

**Bloomake!**

**o)0(o**

"Guys?" called Uryuu, sprinting into the field. "Guys?"  
No one but crickets answered him.  
"_Oh God!"_

**o)0(o**

_Feel free to submit omakes for any chapter. I can't always think of good ones, so any that make me laugh will be added. :D Remember to review!_

_Alliriyan~*_


	29. Sublimation

**Hell Butterfly**

**Sublimation**

**~29~**

**o)0(o**

"If I was so scared of losing my subordinates, I would not let them off the leash at all." Sosuke did not give Starrk the respect of his full attention, instead idly rolling the grey Hougyoku in the palm of his hand. "Nor would I send my laziest disciple to retrieve them. Tenebra Shirojos will return to my side whenever I wish it. Let her be kept in the Shrine as long as they like. It saves me the bother of dragging 'Naraku' to Seireitei at a later date."

The Espada and his Fraccion shrugged at each other, the empty-handed return had caused less of a stir than expected. Even the sense of rebellion it engendered had been diluted.

Aizen glanced at them, questioningly.

"Are you not even going to apologise?"

Starrk found himself kneeling, a kowtow of shame and humiliation. His face pressed into the chill stone floor, cooling the hot embarrassment he felt from an action he had not initiated. Lilynette too was prostrated on the ground, not even fidgeting in discontent. Aizen allowed their new situation to sink in for a moment, analysing them as the sense of powerless drenched their iron skin.

He lifted his fingertips delicately from the glassy surface of the dark orb. "How unconsciously helpful our former guest Orihime has been."

A simple, honest smile of genuine interest graced the warmonger's pale face. "Had I remained blinded by its sheer strength, I never would have discovered its deeper properties."

Effortless hold broken, Starrk stood up and abruptly marched from the chamber, angry thunder clouding his face. Chasing behind, Lilynette was spitting every curse under the crescent moon.

"That arrogant bastard," she growled, unused to being bested at all or its sour flavour. "I'll kill him, I'll absolutely kill him."

"If only!" barked Coyote in reply, meaning it for the first time.

**o)0(o**

Toushiro was pacing back and forth, a white tiger eyeing up its prey, readying itself for the moment to strike. Hyourinmaru was in bankai form and the heavens were indeed frosting around him. As he gathered and moulded and sharpened his reiatsu, ice began to shift from his luxuriant spreading wings and compact upon his sword. Even the four-petalled stars that always hovered behind him, measuring his power in amethyst diamonds, had begun to overlap and merge. It was a feat of self-control and concentration that only a true genius could achieve. He kept his focus fixed upon his target, viridian eyes unwavering.

When the first flower bloomed upon the edge of his blade in purest snow-white-

He struck.

Sailing over the gorge left by the fallen bridge, a flurry of snowflakes and steaming condensation trailing behind in his wake, Toushiro hit the ground running and sprang forth again, accelerating through the open portal into the Shrine of Penitence. Its gouged and blackened walls closed around him, the space to the tower's centre covered in a single flash-step.

So blinkered by his single-mindedness that the lofty heights, cracked spiral steps, the twitching shadows; the dim and slightly unnatural light all went unregistered – not so the way reiatsu was bleeding away from him faster than he could strike. She looked frail, tiny and helpless. With every step Hyourinmaru too seemed to shrink and weaken as the white stone drank his strength insatiably. The zanpakuto trembled, shivered in his palms as he lunged.

It sheared through the meat of her small body, not like a blade, but a phoenix feather...

In hope that the sins done unto her would crumble into ash.

**o)0(o**

The child screamed, back arching in an unconscious response to soul-splitting agony.

She slumped bonelessly, gasping against the red restraints, eyelids still shut. Grey blood flowed from the wound as he withdrew his blade with a cringing expression. War was meant to be impersonal. Instead this was a victim he knew far too well, a feisty tomboy who could even bully a death god captain into playing football. She didn't look like a human girl anymore. Only a corpse.

Something fluttered in front of his eyes, and he blinked. It was a hell butterfly.

Had it worked?

Looking up quickly, he saw several of them, filtering into the tower through the high window slits, scattering shadows across the flagstones as they danced closer down the thin rays of sunlight.

Toushiro held his breath unconsciously.

Countless swarms of butterflies moved in a black swarm that blotted out the ceiling and sky, their tiny wing beats combining in a gargantuan effort to produce the faintest, hushed, whisper of a susurrus.

The shivering sound echoed gently around the reaper and the reaped. A legion of messengers the likes of which he had never seen before; sent from a mysterious nowhere to guide a lost soul home again.

Sharp rays of sapphire began to lance upwards from Espada Zero's motionless corpse, the path of Konsou cutting even through sekiseki to open a way for her. Hitsugaya allowed Hyourinmaru to slip from his cold fingers, and the zanpakuto dropped noiselessly to the floor in deference to the awe-inspiring phenomenon flickering above. He did not see the ground swallow the girl and moments later release her again; too distracted by her escorts.

Erratic, zigzag, leaping and falling, the purely random course of a beautiful insect's flight. In their multitudes they formed undulating streamers and banners, interweaving in unplanned synchronicity; illusory patterns. As one, the fluttering scraps of dark alighted upon the walls and the floor and even the red leather straps that chained Tenebra Shirojos to the tower's core. In their droves they landed, hiding every speck of white from view and twitching their restless wings. The blotches of colour created shimmering constellations of vivid pink across the sea of midnight butterflies.

In perfect unison, they fell still.

In the silence, the shock of Karin's first breath was deafening.

**o)0(o**

Her lungs inhaled once, twice, thrice. At the fourth, her eyes opened,

"YUZU!" yelled the girl, bolting upright. "Yuzu, run! I…"

The scarlet collar almost choked her as she scrambled to the defence of a memory. Disorientated, the child sputtered, stood nervous and still, scouring the prison for something familiar. Had the Hollow brought her here?

Flocks of butterflies were fleeing the tower, disturbed by her sudden thrashing and shouting, their task completed. She watched them, jaw gaping in disbelief. It was all too surreal. Probably she was dreaming, but then why the vicious pain in her chest? Hugging herself and gasping for air, for calm, she tried to recall how she had been brought to wherever this was.

She felt like she had woken up from an empty nightmare, her pulse still racing.

"Karin."

Spinning to face the voice, it took a moment to remember who he was.

"You! What's-his-face! I didn't expect you to come in time!" Her face: human, tanned, and totally lacking in Hollow holes, split into a broad bright grin. "Did you rescue me?" She stepped towards him, halted yet again by the crimson shackles. One hand drifted up to tug at the ring round her throat without quite paying attention. "That's amazing. Ma…Matsu…that woman told me you were a genius, hey?" She laughed. "I can't remember names today. Sorry."

"My name is Hitsugaya-taicho," said the captain humourlessly. It would have been harder to disguise the twitch of a smile had she not mentioned Rangiku. "And no, I didn't rescue you." His head dipped down in apology. "Do you not remember what has happened to you?"

"…No?" she replied, smile turning brittle and hesitant.

The boy picked up his sword and headed for the gateway, somehow afraid to see her reaction. Her ignorance of the life-shattering events that had brought her here. "When was the last time you saw your brother?"

She stared at his back, beseeching, one lonely hand stretched out as if she could capture him from so very far away. In her hollow and shuttered half-life, she had been comatose since the moment of her creation; couldn't remember that blood had stained her hands only days before. "I don't know. You said you'd help me find him, you're his friend, right?"

Toushiro had intended to simply call the tower guards to cut the girl loose, but misgivings made him pause. Perhaps the memories would cause her terrible anguish, yet it was even more dangerous to let her wander free in blissful ignorance. He knew Kurosakis well. They were disobedient, impulsive, reckless trouble-magnets. If she didn't know what she was, then she would be recaptured in no time.

"You're his enemy, right?" replied the shinigami regretfully. "Tenebra Shirojos."

**o)0(o**

The memories flooded back into her mind, her whole and functioning mind, in a mad rush of fragments and heartless emotions. It was a distorted horror film that she experienced with a feeling of déjà vu so intense it ached. As if she had been swallowed by a black-and-white kaleidoscope; the recollections surrounding her and tearing away at her innocence mouthful by mouthful, a shoal of piranhas.

Ichi-nii, carved up strip by strip until not a scrap of him existed in any dimension. Nothing in the minor-emergencies clinic had prepared her for such a gruesome first-hand view. She relived what she had been so mercifully spared the first time, every last detail drawing a stronger reaction in a retrospective maelstrom.

Toushiro watched as she seemed to fold in half, fists clenched and biting her lip. Approached her slowly, patting her shoulder hesitantly because he had never been one for comforting people. The girl dug her fingers into his white robe and dragged herself up to his height. And to his surprise her eyes were dry. Wild, terrified, but not damp.

"I won't cry," she vowed to him through gritted teeth, with greater self-control than many of his peers; "because…because it wasn't me who did that. Not me. I never did. And I won't ever cry because it makes Yuzu sad. Alright?" She challenged him, needing a fight to steady her nerve. "And I'm better now, so please can I go home?" Her voice changed in an instant, suddenly true to her terribly young age. "Take me back to my house, Toushiro, _please_?"

"I can't," he whispered, unconsciously imitating her hushed plea.

"I want to see my sister!"

"It's not possible, Karin."

"Listen, _listen_, Oyaji will be so worried about me, please can I just tell them I'm okay!"

They were gripping each other's shoulders, eye to eye, equally determined. But the captain held the trump card, not that he was proud to play it.

"Karin. Pay attention to me. You're dead. This is Soul Society. They've even held your funeral already. You can't go back, not without any powers to sustain you in the real world. Yuzu wouldn't be able to see or hear you. And Isshin…" He trailed off, figuring she'd had enough stress for one day without further revelations about her parentage.

Her mouth trembled. "…but I need to apologise for Ichi-nii…"

The words were tiny, ashamed.

Toushiro gave her an impulsive hug. She was so small just then. He didn't have Matsumoto's talent for hugs, but it had to help in some way, right?

"Don't worry about him," soothed the reaper. "He's fine." He politely ignored the dampness on his shoulder and the muffled sound of her sobs. Shinigami confidentiality protocol also went flying out the window. "Do you know his friend Inoue? She can control time. She put him back together again. He's fine."

"WOAH!" shouted Karin, lurching backwards and totally forgetting her tearstained face. "Orihime-chan can control _TIME_? That's so COOL!"

Hitsugaya blinked, nonplussed.

"I always knew she was awesome! Man, she's nearly cooler than Tatsuki-chan now! And she really put him back together again, like Humpty Dumpty? WOW. I mean…Ichi-nii is alive?"

He nodded mutely, thinking; _is this hysterics?_

"He's alive!" she laughed, tears escaping unnoticed again. Perhaps she waived her rule for tears of joy. "I can't believe it!" The ex-Espada moved to run outside, as though her brother would be standing there waiting for her with his trademark scowl.

"_Oof!"_ Once again, she jerked to a halt against the red collar. Finally she noticed it.

"Toushiro," she said flatly. "Can you take this off me now?"

"No," he replied, equally dry. "I'm placing you under quarantine procedure as you're currently listed as Public Enemy Number Three. You'll retain the collar and arrancar clothing until further notice for easy identification. And it's Hitsugaya-taicho."

She looked down at her strange and almost feminine attire with dismay. "I don't think I have to obey someone who's not even _older_ than me," she muttered obstinately.

"I'm thirty-nine," growled the albino prodigy. "And my rank is second only to the Sou-"

Her face was the very picture of disbelief and horror. "THIRTY-NINE? _Yuck_, that's so middle-aged!"

"O-Oi!" he yelled back, suddenly flustered, as if his lieutenant had returned from the grave purely to annoy the hell out of him. "Everyone else around here is a few centuries old!"

"Oohh, you are such a liar," responded Karin with an evil grin, looming over him on tiptoe.

She was okay. She was still here, somehow, in some fashion, and her brother had been resurrected, and Yuzu was still safe because she could feel it in her soul. Oyaji wouldn't have been harmed. She was okay, and she would pretend that nothing had happened, bury those vague memories that belonged to a mindless nobody; and pretend this was just an adventure. Perhaps play some undead-football. Never mind that she was a ghost, because Ichi-nii was a shinigami and would definitely come to see her sooner or later.

It was weird to think of herself as a ghost.

"Hey Toushiro," chirped the girl to her jailor, who was still stewing in his own rage. "If I don't believe in myself, do I still exist?"

She felt good, in spite of everything that had been done to her.

And that was existence enough.

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

**= Torin in 60 seconds =**

The team of ex-ryoka tumbled out of the portal and landed in a heap of curses and elbows. In the middle of their intricate efforts to extricate themselves, a small figure hopped over their backs - eliciting many groans of pain and death threats - and stared around at Seireitei with an impressed whistle.

"So this is Soul Society, huh?"

Ichigo heard the deceptively dulcet tones of his sister.

He freaked.

"KARIN! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?" he screeched from somewhere within the contortionist masterpiece of himself, Inoue, Chad and Ishida.

"Yo!" said she, totally unruffled. "Which way to the Captains' quarters?"

Rukia appeared by her side out of nowhere by the power of kido. "Tenth Squad HQ is straight up the main street and to the right, take a left at the robes boutique (black is the new black!) and after that take a different direction at every corner you come to - here's a slightly outdated map and a satnav, if Hitsugaya-taicho isn't there you can just wait in his office, Matsumoto-san will sort you out from there; may the force be with you good luck BYEEE!"

"Kthxbi!" grinned Karin with a nonchalant wave, and so she left.

"What."

"Just."

"Happened."

"DUMBASS?" yelled Ichigo in a full-on-badass-brother-complex-bankai, tossing his obstructing friends away like dry leaves and jumping into the air with Zangetsu singing out for someone's blood.

Rukia tutted and crooked her finger at him, beckoning the shinigami substitute closer. As he inched nearer, he spotted her pulling the infamous sketchbook out of her shihakushou and tried to escape. Sadly, not even bankai reflexes can evade the dread Bunnies. She stamped on his back, grinding his face into the dust until he gave in and looked at her inhumanly awful scrawl.

It involved a deformed bunny with long eyelashes surrounded with uneven hearts and a bear with a white…pineapple? on its head complete with several icy blue sparkles. All scribbled in no time at all with a secret rainbow marker she had unscrewed from the hilt of her zanpakuto.

"It goes like this, Ichigo…" She began to flip the pages. "Girl meets boy. Girl challenges Boy to win a football match for her. Boy proves his skills whilst Girl also shows off sporting talents. Hollow attacks Girl. Boy pwns Hollow. Girl is happy, ruffles boy's hair in a way that is both irritating and memorable. Boy reveals he is undead and heads back to afterlife. Boy does not contact Girl. Girl gets impatient and follows undead brother to next world. Girl finds Boy. Girl beats the stuffing out of Boy. Boy caves in and falls in love with Girl. Girl hooks up with Boy." She turned a final page to reveal the last scene which was mysteriously black. "The ending is censored due to both participants being underage. Any questions?"

Ichigo leapt up once again and made to chase after his sister. Rukia caught hold of his belt and dragged him back. "Sit down, jailbait. Children aren't allowed in the Captains' offices."

"But she-"

"DO NOT QUESTION CHAPPY! THIS IS IN THE NAME OF TRUE LOVE!"

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	30. HB: The Abridged Series! Arc Two

Hell Butterfly: Arc Two: Karakura: The Abridged Series  
aka The Dreaded Recap Episode STRIKES BACK

Ch15 – When the Living Haunt the Dead

The arc begins with Ichigo in major denial. Without even stopping to say hello to the girl who just necromanced him, he runs to Yuzu's room and confirms that Karin is indeed not in it. When he's done possessing Barbies and scaring the living daylights out of his remaining sister, Ichigo sits down with Yuzu and tells her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

That finished, he proceeds to reveal his resurrection to Tatsuki, everyone in the Urahara shop plus drinking buddies, Rukia, the Shibas, and Kon, who is not too chuffed about giving his body back.

Ichigo returns to his room and asks Inoue if she likes donuts, because that is more logical than saying thanks. She faints for joy. Clearly she's not very logical either.

Ch16 – Donut Day

Everyone has a day of deep-fried donuts and good times in order to fortify themselves against the angst to come. Yuzu is once again introduced to the concept of Bostov = Kon = male, and once again takes it badly.

The donut shop is cameo central. Inoue fulfils her life's ambition and then some by buying Every. Single. Donut. In. Existence. EVER.

Rukia tries to pep-talk Ichigo but he's still in denial and pretends he's fine. This leads to an argument. Arguments lead to food fights. Food fights lead to the Dark Side. The Dark Side has cookies. I see no problems here.

Ikkaku explains to Yumichika that his orange and purple and feathers-ness actually looks hideous. Chizuru and Risa meet by a curious twist of fate and instantly fall in smex. Isshin crashes the party and reveals Ichigo missed his birthday whilst in Hueco Mundo, so he's now 16! Yay! He is no longer jailbait!

Matsumoto is hiding her pain at Gin's betrayal by getting drunk at every opportunity. Isshin recognises her from his secret past and whooshes her away for a night of drinks and raves. Urahara and Yoruichi go too to complete the oldskool crowd. As they exit, Isshin reveals that he specifically trained his children not to notice strange behaviour, which explains why they never caught him out.

At the end of the day, Urahara returns to pay the bill and Isshin sits in his house, listening to his children failing to stay cheerful and staring at his dead wife's poster.

Ch17 – Shifting Silver

We scoot to Hueco Mundo to find Aizen in a tizzy because Orihime broke the Hougyoku. All his new arrancars collapse into grey dust, and the Espada he has already, Karin in particular, are not quite as amazing as he'd hoped. In response, he tells them all how useless they are and that they'd better eat lots so they grow up big and strong. His army obediently goes out hunting.

Aizen's motto is 'exceed your limits'.

The Espada express their doubts and distrust of their master in private. Nel reveals she got her heart back when she became an arrancar, Grimmjaw reveals he's too hardcore to be depressed.

On the family hunting trip, they're having some trouble getting the mindless Espada Zero to join in. Gin volunteers to scare her into action.

FLASHBACK TIMEZ! We witness Gin and Aizen's first meeting. Gin kills hundreds of Hollows in about 2 seconds and gets his reputation as a scary mofo.

In the present, Gin shows his bankai as 'Shoot to Kill, Shinso', a totally indiscriminate backstabber of an attack that consists of countless blades popping out of nowhere without warning. Hence he's very good at dodging.

Karin Zero is goaded into action and tells Grimmjaw off for disrespecting her. Aizen joins the party and explains that whenever Tenebra Shirojos is awake, it's her zanpakuto spirit Naraku talking. Naraku hates Aizen, because zanpakuto can only have one partner and hers is now a twelve-year-old with no brain.

When she rebels, Aizen traps her in a Caja Negacion and she swears to send him to hell.

Finally, we meet Morff the Hollow Gecko, Hueco Mundo's mascot!

Ch18 – Midnight's Silence

Isane is having nightmares again and does a nightly round of the hospital rather than brave her weird dreams again. We learn that she performs a secret, silent euthanasia kido for those shinigami who are tired of the afterlife but have too much reiatsu to move on naturally.

Isane was the one to heal Rukia and Ashido Kano after they returned from Hueco Mundo in pieces. Ashido is still completely loopy after 500 years of isolation and doesn't quite believe he's back in civilisation. After a short conversation Isane offers him the same silent kido favour. He agrees.

She gives him a kiss goodbye in thanks for all his hard work, and he twigs he's not hallucinating the whole back-in-Seireitei thing just in time to stop her kido and give her a big hug. (Checking she was real, of course. *Cough*. Crack pairings are cute! Like you could resist when one is a raving loony and the other's name is almost 'Insane'!)

They chat about how a couple of the captains he used to know are still alive, how he's not crazy, and then Isane goes back to bed.

Ch19 – Gotei Elite

The indulgence in side stories continues, and we have a shedload of promotions after some more Isane and Kano craziness.

Ashido becomes the captain of Ninth Division, Tousen's old squad. Hisagi is his vice.

Renji becomes captain of Third Division to replace Gin, and Kira is his vice-captain.

Isane has bankai for convenience and becomes captain of the kido-skilled Fifth Division in order to groom them into a second medical squad. Hinamori remains the vice, supposedly as her squad now has psychotherapy on tap.

Rukia spots an extra fukutaicho badge when she's picking up their new haoris, and sneakily rewards it to herself for killing the 9th Espada Aaroniero. This is what Ukitake had planned all along, so she is now the vice-captain of Thirteenth Squad, so long as Byakuya doesn't find out.

Yamamoto finishes with a speech reminding everyone to prove how badass they are and train hard.

Ch20 – The Cult of Prometheus

Filler.

A gang of humans who are so lacking in spiritual presence that ghosts can't even touch them. Because their leader Mitsubishi lives on Ichigo's street, he witnessed the night Rukia lent him her powers and is now using his friends' immunity to target shinigamis. By stealing their zanpakutos he believes he can become as powerful as Ichigo, convinced it was a combination of living and dead energy that made Ichigo so ridiculously mighty.

Filler

Orihime is moved out of her flat and into the Kurosaki Clinic so that Ichigo can keep an eye on her in case Ulquiorra comes knocking again. He also finds out that she stays in the top 3 students at their school in exchange for her uncle paying her rent – otherwise she'd be sent back to her parents. (It's canon that Sora ran away with her because their parents were abusive – she's not orphaned.)

Ichigo is still in a funny mood so he gives Inoue Karin's old bed and she shares the room with Yuzu. Yuzu isn't too happy about this but deals. Isshin puts a glorious stop to the endless 'Kurosaki-kun!'s by demanding Orihime uses their given names. Hallelujah.

Whilst everyone discusses their promotions, Rukia mentions that Unohana once put her in quarantine for a year. Foreshadow o' clock! Be very patient for that one.

Kon and Ichigo are kidnapped by the Cult. Ichigo lies that he inherited his powers from his mother so they leave him alone (little did he know). Because Kon was given drugs whilst he was in Ichigo's body, Ichigo gets totally high once he is returned to it, and thus doesn't notice Mitsubishi stealing Zangetsu. At all. Silly boy.

Ch21 – Damsel in Distress

More filler! *GASP* Is nowhere safe from filler?

Yamamoto completely misunderstands the situation and rushes to the real world to put an end to Ichigo's evil zanpakuto-stealing ways. Ishida tells the gang that Ichigo was kidnapped, which the professional kidnappees Rukia and Orihime find hilarious. Before rushing off to rescue him, they make him a pretty damsel in distress dress for the hell of it.

Mitsubishi lets on that he has also miraculously kidnapped the Soutaicho. How this came about is best explained in the chapter's own words:

"_You gave Yamamoto the upgraded version of Rukia's humanising gigai that seals all spiritual power in about five minutes. In effect he's going to be a doddering old fogey by the time he reaches his target." Kisuke's voice was curiously blank._

"_It was the first one to hand," replied the cat innocently. Silence fell as they eyed each other. _

"_This is why I love you," cooed Urahara, disappearing back into his workshop with a cackle of long-awaited revenge._

Ishida and Inoue give the Cult an impressive speech about how stupid they are and all the hardships Ichigo has suffered in becoming a shinigami. Yamamoto hears it all and tries to be nicer to the ryokas from then on. Ichigo hears it all whilst he's still high and unable to deny it, so his long period of denial is over. They are rescued by Kyoraku.

The Cult attempt to escape and the Soutaicho godmodes them into total submission.

Byakuya realises that Rukia has been promoted against his will and gets rather violent towards Ukitake. Rukia protects her captain by trapping all of the Senbonzakura petals in a pillar of ice, before realising she just made her brother even more pissed off. They flee.

In the omake, Ichigo is forced to wear his damsel dress.

Ch22 – Eclipse

The main plot returns with a vengeance. Matsumoto has been behaving oddly, to the point of finishing all the paperwork. After this she has a final drink with her friends, during which Renji tries to ask Rukia out but is brutally shot down. She then wheedles another secret kido spell out of Isane.

For her final trick, Matsumoto borrows a stack of technology from the 12th Squad and invades Hueco Mundo single handed.

Rangiku and Gin have a very edgy reunion, not sure they can trust each other until Matsumoto asks him why he ditched her for Aizen.

Gin tells her it's because Aizen's ultimate ambition is to overthrow the Spirit King, become god, and change the laws of nature so that Hollows are no longer formed when humans are in torment. This makes him sound suspiciously like a good guy, and Rangiku is tempted to join their side.

Or so it seems, until she stabs Gin in the back. But he stabs her back just as fast.

Matsumoto sends the Hell Butterfly she had with her back to Soul Society to report on everything she learnt, then dies slowly but peacefully with Gin in her arms, using the kido she got from Isane to dull the pain.

We fade out with some beautiful song lyrics.

Ch23 – Testimony

Wonderwice is chasing the butterfly through the Garganta to Seireitei, because he likes butterflies.

Cut to Toushiro receiving the butterfly and waiting impatiently for his peers to arrive so they can listen to its message.

Flashback! The day of Toushiro's promotion. That scene was in fact a dream I had, and was written several months before it got posted. I was Matsumoto, trying to convince the Central 46 to promote Hitsugaya, whilst also mocking him for never beating anyone properly. Hee hee.

Toushiro ices a councillor that foolishly reminded him of Kusaka Sojiro's murder. (Toushiro's best friend from the Diamonddust Rebellion film.)

Back to the Future (in a Delorean!), Yamamoto is eternally suspicious and thinks Matsumoto's death was faked just like Aizen's. They discuss Aizen's apparent noble cause.

Kurotsuchi does something clever to the butterfly that shows them what it saw, which starts unluckily on a moment when Ran and Gin were snogging. Hitsugaya storms out to the still-open Garganta to drag her back. Whilst he's gone the other captains see the rest of the events and learn the truth.

Turns out Nel and Karin started chasing the butterfly too, and Nel decided that Espada Zero would be better off in Seireitei as a nod to Ichigo and connived to drag her there.

Toushiro is less than appreciative because Tenebra is in a murderous mood when she arrives and chases him all over Seireitei, until he traps her in the Shrine of Penitence and leaps out the window. Her reiatsu is sapped away and after making a mess of the walls she calms down and goes back to being a stringless puppet.

Surprised he survived the encounter, Toushiro no longer believes that Matsumoto survived Hueco Mundo if everyone there is that dangerous.

Ch24 – The Parent and the Pea

Toushiro eventually takes the news of Matsumoto's demise to Ichigo, and has to put up with Isshin pretending he can't hear them discussing it and crying anyway.

They nearly escape without further plot devices being sprung – until Kon pretends to be a pea in Isshin's dinner and forces him out of his body.

Ichigo doesn't take the news that his father is a shinigami very graciously.

Ch25 – Ichioku Gyokusai

No one takes it graciously. Hitsugaya is demanding to know why his memories were tampered with to forget his old Tenth captain, Ichigo wants to know why Isshin hasn't defended his family from Hollows in the slightest, and Yuzu is mystified as to how ghosts in false bodies have babies.

Isshin opts to spread the blame a little, and flips over the poster on the wall to reveal that his wife Masaki was also a shinigami. Ichigo's mind is blown.

So begins the history of the epic romance between Masaki and Isshin – or rather, the persistent stalking.

Isshin was a 4th Squad nobody who trained his way up to 10th Squad captain with his crush on Masaki as ample motivation.

Masaki, eternally unimpressed by his lack of mysteriousness, was the Third Seat of the Twelfth Division, and used as a living mega-battery by Urahara and Kurotsuchi.

The stalking and rejections continue for many years until Masaki reveals the truth behind her prodigious power to Isshin – after which they continue for many years more.

Masaki suffers from Soul Awakening, the spiritual equivalent of a genetic disorder. Thanks to this, the memories of her past lives don't sleep peacefully in the depths of her spirit, but rather wake up and cause havoc with her mental state and reiatsu control. A side effect however, is having absolutely shitloads of reiatsu. This does sadly put her in danger of blowing herself up though, just like Perro Rabioso in the first chapter dying of reiatsu overload.

Ichigo has inherited that very condition, as did Karin. Yuzu would also suffer it if her spiritual powers were ever activated.

Masaki is strong enough to take out several Gillian single-handed in shikai, and even more so in bankai. Her bankai expels all the extra souls within her to form her very own army. It's called Ichioku Gyokusai, named after mass suicide charges from one of the World Wars, and is Japanese for 100,000,000 shattered jewels. (A proverb says it is better to die as a shattered jewel than live as an intact pebble.)

She explains to Isshin that her illness is eventually terminal, and Isshin simply takes advantage of her inability to perform medical kido to become indispensable to her.

In the omake, Ichigo learns that Isshin went out with Matsumoto briefly whilst Masaki eluded him for a century or so – and fears he is ginger because he is an illegitimate child. Mwahaha.

Ch26 – Soul Awakening

Just for starters, we learn that Urahara used Masaki's prodigious reiatsu to help him create the Hougyoku, though it's safe to say many other things went into making it too.

Urahara, exiled by now, tells Isshin in greater detail why Masaki's soul is falling apart and why they must pull off an elaborate heist in order to trick the Soutaicho and make her well again.

Masaki is seriously ill, so Unohana strips her of her shinigami powers which in turn puts her extra souls back to sleep. Kurotsuchi creates an elaborate memory suppression to make everyone forget her so that the Soutaicho doesn't execute them for removing her powers. Urahara designs energy sapping faux bodies that will eventually convert the wearer into a fully functioning human – later to be used on Rukia.

Masaki is deposited in Karakura to start a new life.

And soon discovers that her stalker has followed her all the way. He also enrolled in a med school where he met Ryuuken, the Quincy.

She finally gives in and has a family with him, but it's the operation that saved her before that left her powerless against the Grand Fisher, and it's the overabundance of power Ichigo inherited from her that made the Hollows flock to them.

Ch27 – La Muerte del Diablo

In which Ichigo goes to Seireitei to switch off the memory suppression and steal a Mystery Item, Byakuya acts suspiciously guilty on the subject of memory suppression, Toushiro reveals Espada Karin trapped in the tower to Chad in the hopes he'll steer Ichigo away from her, and Aizen sends some arrancars to get said Espada back.

Unfortunately, he sent his strongest, laziest troops – Coyote Starrk and Lilynette.

They reminisce with Chad and reveal he was once a feared Vasto Lorde named La Muerte. They passed for friends in Hueco Mundo until La Muerte was killed by the original wielder of the powerful Soukyoku. Who, incidentally, was another of those Soul Awakened types, as is Zaraki, but no relation to Masaki.

Lilynette tells Chad that his Hollow skin will consume him and make him a Hollow again, because anyone who goes that far into darkness can never fully cleanse it from their soul.

Chad defends the Shrine and Karin (again) from them, and they give into their laziness and leave without further fight. This is mainly because Espada Zero scares the crap out of everyone except Aisen and they'd much rather she was locked up.

Starrk gives Chad Morrf the Gecko Mascot as a parting gift.

Ch28 – Azure Oblivion

Ryuuken appears and teaches Uryuu a powerful new technique, however he aims it at Chad and Orihime. Uryuu is horrified, convinced he's killed them, but Ryuuken's true lesson is that a Quincy's power has terrible consequences and that shinigami were totally justified in trying to eliminate their tribe.

Besides damaging the Balance of Souls in the world, a Quincy's power also strips the soul of its memories and ejects it to another dimension so it can never reincarnate, an even harsher fate than Hueco Mundo or Hell.

At the same time, Inoue finds out about Vasto Chad and makes the heavy decision to reject his Hollow powers from his body. Chad wants to keep fighting, but Orihime decides the price is too high for someone less crucial than Ichigo.

At the end of the day they spend the evening at the Clinic, chilling like normal teenagers on the last day of their gang being together properly, because after this both Ishida and Chad bow out of the war.

Ch29 – Sublimation

Aizen has a new trick up his sleeve that spells trouble for everyone, and Toushiro exorcises Karin so that she is no longer a Hollow. Because she is already chained up in the Seireitei Shrine with an army of hell butterflies when this happens, her soul has less of a chance to get lost in Konsou and she is neatly reborn a powerless human.

Give that chibi-taicho a round of applause!

Karin initially forgets what has happened, but Toushiro forces her to remember so that she'll be careful should Aizen ever come back for her. She pretends not to cry over Ichigo's death but is over the moon to learn Orihime resurrected him.

With that piece of news, she's all set to ignore her traumatic past (since she mostly slept through it), but first will the shinigamis ever let her see her family again? The answer appears to be no, no matter how harmless she is now.

AND THAT WAS ARC 2!

WE ARE NOW HALFWAY THROUGH!

PARTAY!

I should also give away my pairings, which I kept secret so long. It's IchiHime! Apologies to IchiRuki fanatics. But you know, you can still keep reading for the plot. Please? =)

Please review; I read them all many times over for motivation~

And THANK YOU for reading this far!

_Alliriyan~*_


	31. All the King's Horses

**Hell Butterfly**

**All the King's Horses**

**~31~**

**o)0(o**

Just a fragment of soul, not truly alive, not capable of dying; just a discarded seed of evil that could not be exorcised. Just a knot of broken heart and bitter spirit, a despicable existence. Despising itself.

It wanted to be on the outside.

It wanted to fill the void of its being with the souls of others. Surely one, someday, would stick and become its own true self.

It wanted vengeance.

It sat, somewhat caged, somewhat relaxed, on the side of a crooked skyscraper; examining the ground in the distance before it and the thunderclouds that hung, bruises of regret, in the grim sky at its back.

Light unrelenting drizzle had soaked it to the bone for weeks now, teardrops representing the failures of the King. It played at catching them before they hit the glass that went for ground in this world, snake-strike fists plucking water beads out of the air, examining each one for signs of weakness.

For cracks.

The wind scuttled around him like a wounded dog, whimpering, its gusting bravado lost. It stank of weakness. The Hollow's mouth watered in anticipation…

.._.finally_...

It punched through glass, puncturing the windows it had once thought were unbreakable. Shattered pieces clung to its arm as it reached into the darkness beyond the sheets of reflected blue sky; in any other soul the structural wounds would try to heal, but not here.

No, because King Ichigo was sick, ill like his sister, a disorder inherited from his Queen Mother. His soul only slept, it was not comatose like it should have been. His soul could be awakened.

Stale reiatsu gushed out of the shadowed room, azure sparks crawling over the Hollow's sleeve and bleeding out into the atmosphere to add to Ichigo's reservoir of power. But there were other things in here, memories of other lives that would drive Ichigo insane, pieces of life locked away and forgotten. Ghosts.

It dug its talons into the skull of a faded memory, hauled the ghost out of its coffin and consumed it.

The landscape within Ichigo was a giant feast laid out with none to guard it.

Paradise.

But still not the outside.

And so the Hollow hunted for fissures, flaws, fault lines. And every memory it swallowed would tip the balance of power, away from the king, towards the lowly horse.

**o)0(o**

Something smacked the back of its neck and its head rebounded off a steel frame. It released a hissing growl, turning to glare at its interrupter.

"What are you doing?" demanded Zangetsu, stern and angry. His black cloak swirled in the faint wind, juxtaposing the Hollow's whiteness. The demon lunged for him but the zanpakuto kept charging forwards, bulling into close combat and striking out with the edge of his hand. A blazing arc of energy trailed the gesture, a heavenly fang that bit into the Hollow's torso.

It spat blue blood at him.

"'Hesitate and you will age. Retreat and you will die.' His Maj wants to be stronger, and this benefits all of us, nah?"

"You will not move, act or fight until called for," barked the living weapon, a harsh expression behind the amber glasses. "You are nothing but a shade, so remain in the darkness!"

The Hollow rolled its eyes, something the outer form of a rebellious teenager did well. "Because that's working _so _well for you zanpakutos, huh? Letting some mongrel human take credit for_ YOUR power!_"

"Nevertheless, he must fight in the manner I demand," replied Zangetsu, unperturbed. "And who is my alternative proxy, a Hollow? I would rather eradicate you now and strip Ichigo of your strength."

It smirked, voice jagged and creeling. "How disloyal the sword is to the King and his horse. Mid-war an' all."

"War is eternal. Hollows are fleeting. You would not be missed."

The pale devil was silent for a moment, regarding him with sly eyes, a slyer smile. "Wanna test that?"

Zangetsu lashed out lightning streaks.

The Hollow caught his hands and twisted them round to breaking point, his crushing grip acidic, leaving poisonous white handprints. He staggered, the long brown mane tumbling across his face. "Ichigo!" shouted the zanpakuto, trapped in an empty world with no support against the ravages of a soulless monster.

"Aw, _whoops_." The creature's mouth widened viciously, watching the colour ebb away, a puddle of bleach that seeped throughout the black cloak and blanched Zangetsu's skin as its influence subsumed the sword. "Yer crappy master is too _weak_. He was _using_ you, Zan-chan. It was never _mutual._"

**o)0(o**

Ichigo's eyes snapped open and he scrambled out of the seated Jinzen position his father had mentioned to him for communing with Zangetsu. He looked distressed and panicky, breathing fast, attention darting around the abandoned Vaizard basement from person to person. Rukia, Uryuu and Orihime all stared back at him blankly.

"It's not working," he bit out, shaking. The black chain on Tensa Zangetsu's pommel clinked in his trembling grip. "I'm so-! Why did I even try this? It's mental!"

"What _is_ 'it'?" asked Ishida tersely. "Your relentless need to destroy every resolution I make? I am no longer involved in the affairs of the dead! Why _did_ you call us here without telling us why?"

"If I had told you my idea, you'd have tried to stop me," replied the vaizard with an awkward grimace. Rukia folded her arms and huffed. "Ichigo, it's practically your hobby to find new ways to break rules and blow yourself up every weekend. After everything you've done already, what exactly is so bad that we'd attempt to stop you from doing it?"

His arms had stopped shivering, and he jerked oddly as if trying to run away from his own body. His apparent calm was no good sign. There was no time left to explain, he could feel the paralysis eating up his legs and spine. "Inoue! Put a shield around me, a huge one like Hachi does!"

She hesitated, and he stared pleading at her, "NOW!"

"I reject!" she commanded, raising her arms as four beams of light shot away from her hairpins. "Shiten Kesshun!"

A vast pyramid of amber glass assembled around her friend, the biggest she'd ever made, and she asked what it was for despite sensing the dark, venomous reiatsu billowing around him. She had halted that Hollow before, and Ichigo was placing his trust in her. She had to be firm, strong. Yet Inoue still wondered why he had not enlisted the help of Urahara or the Vaizards for his experiment.

The three onlookers crept closer to the barrier's edge, mystified, worried as the poisonous aura radiated stronger and stronger from his now-frozen, silent form. In the young man's hand flakes of white rust were creeping inch by inch along the hilt and blade of his zanpakuto. None of them had seen inside his soul, none knew what the spreading chalk meant. Mask fragments began to grow out of his skin like tumours, eyes bloodshot and darkening.

**o)0(o**

The Hollow stood alone, the only being in the world, not even a person itself, a white sword cold in its hand. The wind was changing, the city of skyscrapers was turning. It could almost taste the real world as the mirrored windows all around it began to reflect scenes of the outside. The king kicked and struggled and fought tooth and nail, but the blue-grey sky disintegrated anyway, and the Hollow felt itself rushing upwards like a bubble through water to burst on the surface.

It was dim and blurry at first, as they fought for control of the eyes, wrestling for supremacy within the motionless body. A pale figure became visible, the Quincy.

The Hollow grinned and felt the mouth stretch obediently. It was on top, now, had graduated from horse to centaur and in a few moments' time to king.

It stabbed out with the colourless zanpakuto, and hit the Quincy full in the chest.

**o)0(o**

A flash of light and sound.

There was a sensation as if being sucked out through a straw. It felt squeezed and tugged in all directions and yowled its discomfort.

Vision clearing, the Hollow now found its technicolour twin glaring at it, face to face with a sardonic grin. It had never seen Ichigo from the outside before. Why was it outside of him? This was too far, much further than intended - without the human as a base, a template, the demon would simply fall apart. For the first time, the Hollow experienced a tiny whisper of fear. "Wow," said the trickster shinigami, the dark metal of Zangetsu safe in his hand. "You really are gullible."

A glance down and it beheld a physical body. Not Ichigo's, not stolen. Its own. "What the hell is this?" it screeched, incredulous.

It was Ichigo's turn to smirk. "It's a…" he paused. "Eh, Urahara didn't tell me the name. It's that bankai training mannequin. I stole it from his hideout." He pointed his blade at the evicted Hollow in unsubtle threat. "I need to save Karin somehow, even if it means killing her, and you've been holding out on me. That ends now. You're going to surrender _all_ of your power to me."

Rasping laughter crawled from the Hollow's lungs and sat jeering in its throat. "Quit making it sound like I _give_ you power. You only get what you can take, and you can only _take_ a few seconds." It eyed up the hibiscus shield surrounding them; shook its head in an imitation of pity. "And now I'm out of the only cage that could hold me…"

It sidestepped and Ichigo tracked the movement, prowling around each other, two predators neither willing to be prey. The Hollow swayed to its own internal rhythm, the pound of war in a body without a heartbeat. The laughter grew louder, flooding out of the monster's mouth with wild abandon. "Not scared, Ichigo? Normally you're shaking in your skin! _Sure_ Zan-chan can protect you?"

The reaper struck in an instant, dealing a serious wound to empty air. His target leaned companionably against his back, rattling his spine with the force of its cackle. "What did you think I _was?_"

Crouching, bunching its muscles, it seemed to move in slow motion. Ichigo whipped round, slashing open its back with the razor tip of Tensa Zangetsu, just before sand burst into the air at the force of its kick off.

He saw the point of impact, the slow ripple of Inoue's shield, the strange twanging noise as sheets of solid reiatsu buckled and collapsed, shards of resin whirring in all directions; a rain of golden shuriken created by the ghost's explosive movement. He saw every nanosecond in crystal clear definition, yet strain as he might he could not act fast enough to prevent it.

Free, the Hollow multiplied, filling the Vaizard's hidden base with a thousand white shadows, mere after-images of its speed. It was like fighting Karin all over again. Ichigo was focusing so hard he'd forgotten to breathe. He lunged for the only shade that seemed right, half instinct and half guesswork. Zangetsu slit air, time and false flesh. Zangetsu stilled a hairsbreadth away from Orihime's throat, spitting the white Ichigo standing behind her on its black blade. The nameless beast's talons twitched on her skull, so close to the kill; shivered, wailed, and melted away.

"THIS is what you choose not to tell us?" shrieked Rukia at ear-splitting volume.

"Did you not stop to think WHY we'd have tried to stop you?" yelled Uryuu, his bow formed but the arrow not released, a sham power he could no longer bring himself to use.

Storming up to him and grabbing his shoulder, Rukia dragged him down and shouted into his ear in an attempt to drive the message home.

"Why the _hell_ did you use some stupid tech Urahara invented without even knowing how it would WORK?"

He blanked her, eyes darting worriedly round the empty battlefield. Eventually his wild stare rested back on Inoue and flicked round to the Kuchiki.

He mouthed something.

"Speak up, you gibbering idiot," snapped Rukia, incensed by his total disrespect for his own safety.

"Rukia, WHERE HAS HE GONE?"

Silence. Their jaws dropped.

"He's not in me! He's vanished! How the fuck are we meant to find him – I can't sense his reiatsu anywhere!"

Orihime moaned and clutched her head, sinking to the ground.

A golden glow crawled briefly over her skin, and when it faded, she was unconscious.

Frozen, her three friends stared at her in silence.

"That's impossible..." croaked Ichigo.

"How would you know?" bit back Ishida. "You were too busy fighting to learn how souls work in the slightest."

Rukia crouched down, a plume of analytic blue kido hidden in her palm.

"It's inside her soul," she confirmed, quiet, shaken.

**o)0(o**

The Hollow found itself in the centre of a vast crowd. For one accustomed to the presence of only two other people at most, the experience was surreal; as much as falling down a rabbit hole and landing in a realm of opposites. It drifted in the current of humanity for a while, the crush of bodies on all sides making it twitch in discomfort; its urge to destroy abated whilst it adjusted to an alien soul.

The girl's soulscape was hushed; each stranger surrounding the invader held their eyes gently shut. There was no sound but the shuffling of their feet as they walked blindly to nameless destinations. It spotted six bright coloured paper aeroplanes swooping in the distance, the Shun Shun Rikka searching for it, the foreign body.

The Hollow's lip curled. "Like half a dozen fairies make me feel _hunted_."

It raised a hand to smash the nearest sleepwalker into the ground, and they tumbled down in a crack of skull and a splatter of blood without resistance, as did the next, and the next, and the next. But behind the Hollow's back the marks were healing, they were picking themselves up and continuing blithely on. Repairing themselves as a normal soul should. There was no clawhold for a Minus here, no way to absorb the old chained lives littering Inoue's soul. Ichigo's nightmare growled; hunting for other rules it could break. Ways to break free from its wretched dependence. Black and gold eyes sparking with insanity, it prowled this way and that, mauling all it saw.

One of the walkers turned to face it as it struck, and the demon froze, a cold tidal wave of memories rippling through its body.

That face was f...familiar...

Something it had dug out of Ichigo was stirring, ghosts of the past it had consumed for the power they gave. Pictures flashed through its mind: of walking through snow, waiting on a beach for the tide to come in, eating traditional foods in the days when they were new. Sunsets glistening on water, and the bite of cold in a dull, empty winter night, where the only thing to do was stare wanly at the dark-eyed girl sitting beside…

Its fingertips touched the slumbering woman's face, gingerly, as if her skin would burn. Her mouth stretched in the whisper of a smile; it flinched back.

"_Rain,_" breathed the stranger. The Hollow could almost swear it knew her intimately...but the thoughts were fragmented, the names blurred.

"_If I were the rain,_" she made no move towards the invader but that yearning sleep talk remained. "_If I were the rain you weep...could we stay together no matter what?_"

Eerie. A frisson of wrongness crept round its neck and wrists and belly, garlands of nettles pricking every vulnerable area. This was perverse, the way a blind woman saw straight through its bleached skin to the memories within; and more so the way those same memories were making it feel emotions that should have been impossible.

Nervous, and being heartless having no idea how to handle the turmoil she was causing, it backed away. The distance grew and the connection between them snapped. She fell blank once more and turned away.

Suddenly insulted, irate, the Hollow gave chase and raked its talons down her spine. Crumpling to the floor without a sound, the woman yet again smiled at its touch in a pool of crimson. It hissed distastefully. She should have been severed in two. It could do barely any damage here, far from Ichigo's reiatsu.

"Don't ignore me," spat the pale demon, standing over its kill. "Not after saying that, _don't you dare_." It was a kick in the teeth, salt rubbed into a wound.

To pretend that a Hollow was wanted.

**o)0(o**

There was a tiny gasp behind. Whirling round, it caught sight of wide rain-grey eyes – no sleepwalker this one – and a swirl of dark ginger hair as she turned and fled.

The drones watched her leave through closed eyelids, seemed to murmur amongst themselves, chinese whispers; whether of fear, dismay or anger the Hollow didn't care to know. It had found something to hunt.

"_Don't run!_" jeered the demon, giving her a head-start to prolong the joy of the chase, the closest to happiness his ilk could reach, whilst there was still a chance that the next sacrifice might plug the gap in their souls. "_Your life's not worth that much!_"

**o)0(o**

"Who are you ringing?"

"My dad!"

"You'd be better off with Urahara," advised Rukia. "As much trouble as he causes, he's still less dangerous than you."

Ichigo sent her a look of heinous distaste and ended the call. "Fine," he muttered, rolling his eyes as he redialled. "Let's just hope he doesn't hide a Hougyoku inside her whilst he's patching her up."

"He had better intentions than the guy who just unleashed his inner Hollow on the unsuspecting human world," retorted the woman disdainfully, despite having far more right than he did to be angry at Urahara. The boy winced.

Ishida had laid Inoue out on the ground, checked her breathing and pulse; done everything short of putting her in the recovery position, as if that would help. He was at a loss. When she whined through clenched teeth he peeled back one of her eyelids, holding her carefully still, and shuddered at what he saw.

"The whites of her eyes are corroding," he reported; "we need to do something before they turn black completely. There's no time to wait for help. This is an emergency."

"It can't have much of a hold on her," muttered Rukia, standing back some distance. "If we trigger Inoue to use her powers her body may reject the Hollow on its own."

"How do you suggest we do that?" asked Uryuu, doubtful.

"Incite a trained response," replied the vice-captain energetically. She raised her arms, palms aimed at Inoue. "Ohhh, he who has ten thousand fluttering wings, and is crowned with the name of man,"

Ishida yelped and leapt out of her firing range.

"With truth and moderation, lightly scratch your nails against the wall of a dream that knows no sin."

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" shrieked Ichigo hoarsely, trying to shove her away and redirect her kido, but Rukia had suddenly become as strong as Chappy and would not be budged.

"Way of Destruction Number Thirty-Three!" barked the shinigami. "Blue Fire, Crash Down!"

Blue fire crashed down, obediently ferocious, and a vivid amber shield rose to meet it. The Hollow burst out of Orihime in a crackle of electricity, as if she'd swallowed a soul candy. She sat up, reeling. "Oh, I feel sick," said the girl hazily, and blinked muggily at the golden triangle glowing before her like she'd never seen it before.

"Don't give me that face," scoffed Rukia all-knowingly. "I trained her myself. I had no doubt it would work."

Ichigo continued to gape at her. "And if it didn't?"

"I could probably have snuffed out the flames," she said, and coughed before continuing brightly. "Failing that, I know healing kido!" He very nearly fell over in disbelief.

Taking a minute to recover from its giddying trip into another soul, the Hollow leant against a boulder. As its natural enemies continued to ignore it, it began itching to destroy their casual banter. It shouted for their attention. They whipped round, momentarily shocked.

"_What a terrible host,_" it sneered, flipping its king the finger. "_I'm so insulted, I might just leave. Are you that strong you can just ignore me?"_ A Cero was aggregating above its middle finger, the livid red of raw meat. _"To be honest, yer Majesty, I preferred you before yer balls dropped. 'Oh no, oh no,'"_ it squeaked in mocking. "_The Hollow's coming to eat me! I'm too scared to fight!_" Grinning wickedly, it bared its blue tongue at him, flaunting its inhumanity. "_Bet you never told them how terrified you really are of me."_

Ichigo lowered his head slightly, stubborn, bull-headed. Tensa Zangetsu swung back and forth in his fidgeting hand, knuckles white. "Is that any way to talk to your master?" he mimicked, incensed, stalking step by furious step closer to that which he once fled. His eyes were beginning to shine, the valve that held back his thundering reiatsu was creaking open to maximum output.

"_And do they know even when it's two against one, you're not my equal anymore_?" taunted his nightmare, softly, gently.

The words ignited a sky blue firestorm, exploding and compressing and dancing and raging around Ichigo, miniature supernova. "Shadows look taller than the real thing, but they don't exist at all."

Pitch black reiatsu oozed out of his pale twin in answer, and the Hollow leaned forward in anticipation of erasing its jailor. _"I'm the strongest in the world."_

"Karin didn't think so," spat back her brother.

They howled at each other in perfect sync, mirror images of torment, and collided in private, endless war.

**o)0(o**

"Enough."

Urahara's voice was quiet yet it cut between them like cold steel. The bankai mannequin jarred to a halt, twisted grotesquely; snapped in half down the centre like so much polystyrene.

Ichigo tumbled out of the basement's false sky, a crippled raven, and the Hollow's energy entwined with his own as they were slotted back together, inseparable Russian dolls. Bound, they cracked against the ground together, groaned in pain together; jagged reiatsu flaring and spitting in all directions in shrapnel bomb fireworks.

Internally they were still struggling. His mask was swamping his face, trying to suffocate him, but he could just about see through the slits to Urahara looming over him. He tried to choke out for help but the exiled genius just shook his head unsmilingly.

"Please don't play with my toys again."

He left the boy there without another word, striding out of the vaizards' abandoned den; air crackling with his fury.

In silence, for there was nothing they could do to aid in a battle that took place in the confines of Ichigo's soul; his three friends sat down around him and waited uneasily for the victor to emerge.

**o)0(o**

**Bloomake!  
**

**o)0(o**

"We need to trigger her to use her powers!" realised Rukia, smacking her palm. Ichigo picked up Orihime's arms and started flapping her wrists. "Reject! Reject!"

He looked up at his mentor mournfully. "Rukia, it's not working."

"Keep trying!"

Orihime sat up, reeling. "Oh, I feel sick," said the girl hazily, and blinked muggily at the golden triangle glowing before her like she'd never seen it before. "Wow, is that the Triforce?" she breezed. "In Soviet Russia, Triforce finds YOU!"

"Thank Heaven," sighed Ishida, relaxing. "She's fine."

**o)0(o**

Their verbal sparring quickly devolved.

Ichigo: Yeah, well, YOUR MUM!  
Hichigo: You ARE my mum!  
Ichigo: No I'm not, because SHUT UP!  
Hichigo: NO YOU SHUT UP.  
Ichigo: NO YOU.  
Hichigo: YOU'RE SUCH A FAIL!  
Ichigo: Well that makes you a Minus fail!  
Hichigo: A Minus fail is a success so I WIN!  
Ichigo: …Shit.  
Hichigo: Can haz eat ur soul nao?

**o)0(o**

_Welcome to Arc 3: Seireitei!_

_Alliriyan~*_


	32. Dancing on Graves

**Hell Butterfly**

**Dancing on Graves**

**~32~**

**o)0(o**

Karin twisted this way and that, examining her clothes with an eyebrow raised high in incredulity. Well whoever had become a Hollow after failing their fashion degree in the real world – Szayel most probably – really hadn't been able to decide whether it was a shihakusho or a dress or a coat. The V-cut neck she could live with, but a V-cut stomach? It formed a big dramatic X over her torso that shouted 'TARGET', flaunted the gothic zero tattooed indelibly onto the side of her belly, and was black-edged white. White was symbolic of being in Aizen's evil crew – as Toushiro had so kindly noted, she'd stand right out among the crowds of black-robed shinigami. Perhaps she could convince them it was captain's white.

That would be awesome.

"Bonkai!" she shouted to herself, miming an enormous sword. If she carefully blocked out all the gore and fratricide, her memories of the fight in Hueco Mundo were a little like a crazy high-definition action film. And her Ichi-nii had looked pretty cool.

She ached to see him again.

"It's 'bankai'," corrected Hitsugaya, rather amazed at her ability to not have a nervous breakdown. If this was Matsumoto, she'd be drunk in a gutter somewhere by now. If she was Hinamori, she'd be in intensive therapy sessions for the trauma, or knocked out with pills, or seeking revenge against someone. If she was him, she'd be slowly freezing away on the inside whilst duty drove her forwards. But here was a girl who had sworn never to cry again when she was only six years old. He was happy to lie that she hadn't.

"Do I have to keep the collar on? I feel like a pet."

He smiled at her as if his next words weren't scary in the least. "If you ever regain your powers or go berserk or attempt to return to Aizen with information, we can use that red choker to subdue you."

"So am I a pet dog or a pet cat?" asked the Kurosaki sarcastically.

"Whichever you prefer."

"Oh! Screw that, I'm gonna be a punk! Let's give me a Mohican!" She gave his gravity-defying white hair a sideways grin. "You must have plenty of hair gel to lend me, right?"

As far as the captain was concerned, she was speaking a foreign language. He may have entered Rukongai forty years ago, but the life he barely remembered before that certainly hadn't taken place in a modern era.

"I have work to do," he said quickly, deflecting her bizarre questions; and marched back to his offices. She followed him because there was nowhere else to go and no one else she knew here – not that such obstacles would prevent her from exploring for much longer.

As they passed they looked for all the world like a white swan and its dapple-feathered cygnet.

**o)0(o**

"Well if you gave me something better to do, I wouldn't snoop through your private papers," explained Karin as if this was obvious, and there was nothing suspicious in her actions. It was midnight, he'd hoped she was asleep by now, but here she was up to her eyeballs in reports. In search of news on her family again. Every time he turned his back she found a new way to sneak things past him. Of course, he was unaware that all children were prone to this, and had dubbed it a strange trait of Karin-ness.

"Don't worry, I can't even read half of it," she lied brazenly.

"There's a lot of words in there too long for twelve-year-olds, I'm sure," responded Toushiro, aloof.

She stuck her tongue out at him. She'd grown up with medical journals on every shelf, and was far too nosy not to have read them. Oh, he'd be laughing on the other side of his face when he realised she could spell 'antidisestablishmentarianism'!

He had also spent far too long convincing everyone he wasn't as young as he looked to remember that her age group was a great deal cannier than he gave her credit for.

She hadn't quite twigged that even midget death gods had a few heavier concerns than their ability to spell, though.

**o)0(o**

Karin had strolled into the Tenth dojo and flopped right in the path of his training session like a toddler throwing a tantrum. This was even worse than when she picketed his desk and had to be removed by force. His almost limitless ability to tolerate annoying people had finally run out. Matsumoto may have been his match, but this girl was superior. Heaven knew if she started ruffling his hair in front of his troops like the day in the football park, he might just snap and kill her. Again.

"WHY DON'T YOU DO SOMETHING USEFUL AND LEARN HOW TO FIGHT?" he bellowed, realising shortly after that he'd played straight into her trap when she whooped in glee and asked where the swords were kept.

"Stand over there," ordered Hitsugaya sourly, giving her a plain wooden stick. "You can have a sword the day you can make a zanpakuto appear from mid-air." She struck a pose of Dragonball-like concentration and the colour drained from his face. "Don't," he added slightly desperate, remembering exactly who she'd been.

Karin lowered her stick with a sigh of disappointment and trudged over to the corner.

**o)0(o**

"Play football with me," wheedled Karin, twining around the boy like a hungry cat. "Please please please please please pleeeaaase?"

Yes, at home she had been pretty self-sufficient, but at home she had always had games, comics, friends, and at every hour of the day or night her twin sister within easy reach. In Soul Society she was being kept tabs on by a rather humourless shorty – who spent so much time trying to defy his appearance he had no time left for fun.

If she could only lovingly beat up her dad for five minutes, she swore she'd be obedient for the rest of the century.

The girl bounced the football she'd smuggled from a kid in Rukongai on the captain's head, over and over and over again, every impact jarring his hand and making a greater mess of his provision request form.

On the tenth time, he snatched the ball from her and threw it out the window.

"Goal!" cheered Karin, in hopes that he was joining in rather than gearing up to have a raging hissy fit at her. Either one she didn't really mind though. There was a child trapped deep within his child's body that was practically begging to be let out, and teasing him into venting his emotions was as close as he could currently get.

Seconds before he locked her back in the Shrine of Penitence, Toushiro was struck by inspiration. He pulled out his Soul Phone and made a call, looking at his charge shiftily all the while.

"Hi. Yachiru? I need a favour."

When Zaraki turned up minutes later, ten-tonne bulk of gleaming muscle and ragged daredevil grin, with a tiny pink-haired girl on his shoulder offering free piggyback rides on the Ken-chan Express; Karin simply stared.

"Toushiro…" she managed, eyes shining; "I owe you a million for this."

"You coming too?" asked Kenpachi gruffly, secretly amused. Hitsugaya mentally stamped down his inner child who was all for it, and eventually choked out a frosty "No, thank you."

**o)0(o**

Her far-flung adventures with Yachiru soon cured Karin of her reticence towards the rest of Soul Society, and quite soon Toushiro barely saw her at all. He was mostly pleased about that, though it did gradually become apparent that no one else in his Squad spoke to him about anything other than business matters. And if his working relationships were excellently amiable and efficient, his friendships were all the more non-existent.

In the end he threw his pen brush down in a splatter of ink, and buried his face in his arms.

Karin had better things to do.

Jyuushiro was too busy coaching Rukia in her lieutenant duties to offer him sweets out of the blue anymore.

Momo hadn't spoken to him in the same old way since the betrayal.

And he _really_ missed his fukutaicho…

**o)0(o**

Rukia, Renji, Isane, Kira, Hinamori, Ashido and Hisagi were meeting in a Rukongai bar for an informal officer's meeting. Arriving late, Hitsugaya dragged himself in through the door and lurched up to the bar. It seemed keeping tabs on Karin had been running him ragged. That was his excuse, at least.

"Sake," he requested, looking over his shoulder to locate the other captains and vices. He glanced back to see the bartender consider refusing him alcohol.

Toushiro pointed silently at his white haori as the habitual frown crawled onto his face and made itself comfortable. (Although Karin had thoughtfully informed him that it didn't scare her, because no one could out-glare her Ichi-nii.)

The barman gulped and placed a small bottle of rice wine on the counter.

"I'm 40 years old," muttered the captain rebelliously as he paid. Then he sat down with his colleagues and pulled a face after sniffing the fumy contents of the little vase. He poured some into a drinking bowl and raised it in a toast.

"To Matsumoto!" said the boy solemnly, and downed it. His companions, all over a century old, tried not to laugh when he choked.

"How did she drink this crap?" spluttered Hitsugaya incredulously. And sneezed.

Moments later his albino head was peeping over the counter of the bar again.

"Pint of apple juice, please."

Momo smiled at him as he resumed his seat, and he cheered up considerably. "How are you?" he asked, as easily as if they were meeting in the back garden to eat watermelon together. The way Karin discarded bad memories seemed suddenly appealing, and he wondered if he could adopt it himself.

Her gaze dropped. "It's quite complicated to rebuild a Division," she admitted. "We're working really hard, but there are…_reminders everywhere_," she said softly so that only he would hear. Hinamori tried to hide her eyes from him, so that he wouldn't realise they were still haunted.

No, decided Toushiro as he stared mournfully into the depths of his apple juice. Forgetting the bad times looked easy, but clearly wasn't. He didn't know how to do it.

The conversation turned to the new intensive training regimes they would soon be implementing in their squads, and they happily argued back and forth over which way the war would swing when it came to its peak. Kano liked to tell them it would last a hundred years, which made them all clamour to prove him wrong.

He wasn't sure how they got onto the topic, but at some point Rukia and Renji asked to see Karin, and drunk on apple juice, he may or may not have agreed.

When Karin vanished from the Court of Pure Souls the very next day, he was less than surprised.

**o)0(o**

"You know he's part Hollow now," said Rukia as gently as she could. Karin was unafraid of this: she had been too. At least his Hollow was buried underneath, rather than a dominant, mindless doll like her own. "He tried to extract more power from his Hollow and it went badly."

"W-why?" begged the girl, amazed by how few words it took to make her tremble in fear.

Renji squeezed his eyes shut guiltily, baring his teeth and raising his arms slightly in self-defence. "…Because no one's told him you're okay?"

Her shout was loud enough to blow them over. _"WHAT?"_

The redhead cringed.

"We'll take you to him immediately," promised Rukia, making her mind up.

"Hold up, that's really forbidden!" interrupted her best friend. "She might get kidnapped in the tunnels! There was a memo saying removing her from Seireitei would be punishable by death!"

The shorter shinigami drew herself up haughtily. "Well I'm an officer and a noble, and you're a captain, so I think we can choose for ourselves what we do. And the Soutaicho doesn't know how bloody dangerous Ichigo gets when he tries to do things on his own." She winked at Karin daringly. "Besides, if I've learnt anything from the Kurosakis it's that breaking rules is essential."

**o)0(o**

There is someone who has no power. She is young, and small, and blind to the beasts hunting her family. Where the people around her excel at hurting or healing, she does the laundry, cooks the meals and makes sure the house is always a home. Her kind is far more common and much less impressive than the superheroes surrounding her.

But it is all for her.

When the father is stitching up gashes, plastering fractured bones and peering down throats red-raw from coughing, it is so money will always be in the bank to sustain her way of life.

When the brother is pitting his soul and his sword against the fangs of the monstrous dead, it is so they will never get past him and sink those razor teeth into her.

When the sister is defying the law and risking recapture to get home, it is so she can fling her arms around her twin and squeeze tightly, telling her for perhaps the last time how permanently loved she is.

And Yuzu works hard and never gives up, never throws her heart away no matter how many thorns may pierce it, because she understands that she is the core of their family,

_And she must always be there for them to come home to._

But sometimes she wished she could have a little support. She'd dream of her mother returning so that the void would no longer need to be filled by a substitute. Then she could be another carefree planet in orbit around the sun Masaki, instead of trying to anchor everyone on her own. Clearly she wasn't good enough at being a sun, because her satellites kept stealing away into the darkness of space.

Technically, she was the only one still alive. The odd one out, because her parents had turned out to be deceased all along, like a joyful horror story, so perhaps it was only natural the children drifted all too quickly to the afterlife.

Today the image of her family's grave kept hovering in her mind, the tiny square of land where solely the ashes of her mother and twin resided, because Masaki and Isshin had crept into the real world without provenance. There were no grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins.

The darkest fear hidden in the depths of Yuzu's young mind was that her daddy would be the next to go, and then she would have no one to depend on since Ichigo rarely returned from the other side.

She appeared at Isshin's side like a shadow, and asked: "Can we go there today?"

Ichigo's head jerked up, she'd grasped his hand at the same time, and all the bruises his soul had shared with his body when he stepped back into it ached at her light touch. He bit back the complaint; they could both read where she meant in the tilt of her head, the slump of her thin shoulders.

"Of course."

**o)0(o  
**

The sunset was fading as they climbed the steep hill, clouds that had exuded rich colours now a thin, muddy grey-blue wash as their corner of the planet rolled sedately round to face the night. One or two stars were already visible, near the full and well-fed moon. Orihime was pleased to see that; the crescent phase had long lost its charm for her.

Yuzu counted every step and at appropriate moments told herself what should happen. _Halfway up the hill Karin-chan will lose her temper and yell at Otou-chan. He'll be quiet for three steps and forget by the fourth step and be babbling again by the fifth. Ichi-nii will try to ignore it but be rolling his eyes and grumbling three quarters of the way up. Orihime-chan will be giggling because she likes Otou-chan's sense of humour. At the brow of the hill Karin-chan will kick Otou-chan with all her pent-up anger so she has the pleasure of watching him roll all the way down from the top. I'll try to calm Karin-chan down and Orihime-chan will run to help him because she hasn't realised this is normal for us yet. Ichi-nii will laugh once he's sure Otou-chan isn't hurt and then tell him he deserved it. And once we all get to the top again Kaa-chan will be waiting for us with a picnic basket because we were only meeting here before catching a train to a beach. And we'll stay there all day in the sun._

They crested the hill in silence. Yuzu dragged her sleeve across her damp face, scolding herself for daydreaming.

Ichigo faltered and his hand clenched round hers tightly, too tight. He fell back as she soldiered on, until they were engaged in a tug of war as neither would change direction and both refused to let go. "Ichi-nii!" said Yuzu crossly, stamping her feet and leaning as far forward as she could drag him.

He released her and she toppled, crashing into Isshin's wide back, also frozen still. Orihime pulled Yuzu to her feet and pointed, dumbfounded, at one of the gravestones in the distance. The right one, nestled in its row of identical fellows. But she'd never been here with them before so how did she know which it was?

"We have to go," croaked her brother. There was a taint in his voice she had never heard before. Fear? Or something darker? Plucking at her shoulder feebly, his face ghost-white. "O-Oyaji…I can't fight her, not like this." _I tried to get stronger but it failed. I tried to beat that demon and it just made me unstable._

Their father groaned, hoarse. "They always target the family first." The two men looked at each other. If they tried to fight now it was just as likely Ichigo would lose control and attack them himself. "You can at least run away fast enough with Yuzu-chan, right? My beloved foolish son? I'll buy you three some time."

"You wouldn't even slow her down," whispered the vaizard, terrified eyes fixing upon the distant tombstone. Pausing…

Ichigo stuttered something that barely sounded like language and broke into a flat-out run. He pelted away like a greyhound as Isshin fell to his knees in sudden exhaustion. She heard the thud of his kneecaps striking the concrete.

The last glows drained and twilight shadows crowded the cemetery as she translated her brother's garbled words…slowly realising she'd known the name all along.

Yuzu was struck with a sudden, crippling shyness. She didn't dare look ahead.

Because, because, as her fingers twined together and her skin blushed bright red in a rush of giddy excitement, she thought seeing who her Nii-chan was dashing towards just might make her explode with happiness.

**o)0(o**

Karin watched the sun setting, scrambling to the top of the gravestone she shared with her mother and swinging her legs without an apparent care in the world. It wasn't like she'd be told off for disrespecting her own grave and she was invisible to most eyes now. Looking down past her toes, she could see an old bouquet withering on the polished stone, petals scattered a long time ago and the battered plastic wrapping housing little more than dry sticks. In the end, Rukia had brought her to the outskirts of Karakura in case her house was being watched by the arrancars. She and Renji had gone to fetch the Kurosakis and bring them here, but now Karin wondered whether she was being given time to catch her breath.

She couldn't taste the air so well anymore. Everything felt a shade more distant and numb than she was used to.

What would she say to her family? What could she say that would be good enough? All she wanted to say was I love you, I love you, I miss you. Perhaps not apologise to Isshin for all the fights (he did encourage them), but let him know she missed his lunacy after all. And Ichigo – it was hard to imagine what state he'd be in. Probably thinking it was his fault again. If she wanted to fix that she'd need to rewire his brain, it was just the way Ichigo worked. But all her life he had protected her with every ounce of effort he owned. To fail so spectacularly…maybe he'd never smile again. But she refused to leave him on the riverbank, searching week after week for a ghost who would never come. Not twice.

Yuzu…

Maybe she could haunt Yuzu.

Like the clinic ghosts. Ichi-nii wouldn't be all stressy and hi-spec about it this time.

Yeah. And then they wouldn't have to be apart. Sure they weren't conjoined at the hip, or even identical, but it was Yuzu who had been there from the word go and it was Yuzu whose absence burned the worst.

She wondered when Rukia and Renji would return, minutes starting to drag. Her…what to call it…redeath had left her powerless to sense other spirits, which was just as well. With the splitting headaches strong presences used to give her, just being in Seireitei would have been murder. Hell. The end of her.

"I'm getting way too morbid," she muttered. The irony was not lost on her and she grinned.

And so the first sight Ichigo had of his sister as he raced along the path to find her was exactly as she had always been, all sarcasm and dark-eyed laughter. And he could not help but smile back, a smile that burst free from an old corner of himself he'd forgotten about, so wide his face would split, so overwhelming he couldn't speak past the emotion clogging his throat. A smile she hadn't seen since the days he used to wrap their mother round his little finger with it.

She heard the frantic footsteps and turned just in time to open her arms and be snatched up by him as he thumped bodily into the headstone. "Ichi-nii!" she shrieked, ecstatic, unable to stop repeating his name.

They clung together, trying their hardest to break each other's ribs with the crushing force of the embrace. It seemed to last forever, both wishing it would.

In Ichigo's mind Karin had been an eternally lost sacrifice to Aizen. He had got back home a quivering mess after a long fight with his inner Hollow, and had come to the graveyard at Yuzu's request but also to remind himself why saving Karin, in whatever way he could, was worth any number of split personalities and mental assaults. He had climbed that hill with no expectations or wishes.

But here she was, unscarred, and smiling in a way he never dreamed.

They had destroyed each other, but now fate was smiling down and choosing not to grind them into their sins. Instead, deliverance.

"Where did your frown go, Ichi-nii?" giggled Karin, squirming loose so that she could reach up and touch that zeitgeist smile, making sure it wouldn't fall off.

"I think I left it at the bottom of the hill," laughed the death god. "How can you be okay?" he asked finally, stepping back to examine her from head to toe. Her enemy uniform and crimson choker left a bad taste in his mouth, the tattoo more so. Thankfully it was all eclipsed by the humanity and verve sparkling from her eyes. Her Karin-ness.

"Your shinigami friends trapped me in the Shrine so all my power vanished and then Toushiro stabbed me and I got better," shrugged his sister, explanation flowing easily as if about a stranger.

Ichigo's face shifted, demonic. "Toushiro did _what_?"

"Uhh, how were you planning to save me once you'd got beefed up?" retorted Karin, unimpressed. He slumped. "Okay, there was nothing else we could do, but why _Toushiro_?" He'd wanted to rescue her personally - Ichigo in a nutshell.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, my brother: the failure of a guardian," teased the ghost. Yesterday those words would have broken his heart; now he felt curiously invincible.

"You don't seem sad at all," he noticed, and she startled like he'd seen straight through her act.

"It's a secret," she muttered rebelliously. "But you know how it doesn't matter whether ghosts exist because I don't believe in them?"

Ichigo was mystified, but that was Karin's logic all over. "Yeah?"

She leaned in close and whispered it in his ear. "I don't believe in the bad memories, so they don't matter either."

An escaped tear dripped onto his neck and crawled down his back in an eerie sensation.

Before her composure cracked further, Isshin swooped in and stole Karin away, berating Ichigo for hogging her, and within seconds she was laughing again as she squealed to be put down. Her father refused, ridiculously pleased with himself as he spun her round like a toddler. "You're late for dinner, Karin-chan!" he crowed, beside himself with glee and making less sense than ever before. "I thought I taught you not to run off with strange old arrancars!"

"You didn't teach me anything you old pervert!" retaliated his delighted victim. "You kept it all secret, you idiot, you stupid oyaji, I missed you so much!"

Orihime was standing nearby, and when Ichigo turned round her heart skipped a beat. There it was, that legendary, mythical, stupidly big smile Tatsuki had told her about: an older, truer version of him she'd never met before.

To hide her shock, she gabbled a cheery hello to Karin-chan that sounded completely strangled. Inoue was never very good at hiding her feelings.

"Oh!" cried the spirit girl, wrestling free of her father and staggering dizzily. She had intended to hug Inoue too, but had to lean on her instead. "Thank you Orihime-chan. For putting him back together. You're like, ten times cooler than Tatsuki for that."

"Oh, I could never beat Tatsuki," replied the redhead very seriously; "but thanks." Once Karin had recovered her balance, Inoue reminded her of the other person waiting anxiously to see her.

"Yuzu-chan is here too…" Orihime blinked. "Did she just flash-step over there?"

All three of them regarded the empty space formerly occupied by Karin.

"Hm."

**o)0(o**

"Rukia didn't send you here did she?" said Karin knowingly, fidgeting one step away from her twin.

"No," sniffled Yuzu. "I just wanted to come."

"Clever Yuzu," hummed her dead sister, voice glowing with pride. "You always know where to find me."

The brown-haired girl bit her lip and stared at the faint heat haze. "B-but I can't see you, Karin-chan!" she wailed. She lunged forward but her hands slipped straight through, like trying hold water or sand. Her sister trickled through her fingertips, intangible. "It's not fair!"

"I'm sorry," whispered Karin, shivering at the unreal sensation. "I wasn't allowed to come back, we couldn't get a gigai or-"

"I love you though," hiccupped Yuzu, ignoring the excuses. "I'm sorry I ran away when the monster came. I sh-should've stayed…but you told me not to…"

"That's good, right? I protected you." The dark-haired one sounded worried, fearful her sister regretted survival, because then it was Ichigo all over again and they would have failed to keep her safe and…innocent. "I wanted to."

Yuzu looked around, nothing but night time visible. "But-"

"But nothing. I slept through the whole thing and then they fixed me and now I'm fine, so you have to be fine too." The disembodied voice was implacable. "It really isn't fair though. I'm meant to be the older one and now you've beaten me. That's like breaking sibling taboo." Its grin was audible. "But now you have to be happy so I can be happy too. Otherwise," it turned threatening; "I'm going to haunt you. Properly. And we both know you hate horror films."

The voice drifted nearer. "_OOO ooo OOO ooo oooo…_"

Yuzu started giggling helplessly. "No you won't!"

"_WHOOOOOOO!"_

She shrieked with laughter. It bubbled up. She was meant to be miserable, yet the joy frothed out of her. "Stop it! I'm trying to be sad at you!"

"_I won't let yooouuuu…_"

"Karin-chan!"

No power in the world was able to ruin their elation that night. Once the others heard the laughter and knew it was safe to approach the twins, they all huddled together in a happy mess.

"As long as we can find each other again, we were never dead at all."

Everyone heard Karin say it.

Even the Hollow trapped in a cage of Zangetsu's making heard it.

And the words made it pause.

An embodiment of despair, the hatred of fate, the futile rejection of the natural order. Pausing. Thinking. Against every fibre of its being, almost…hoping.

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

Rukia: I'm sorry Karin, we looked but there was no one home – Oh. You're all here?  
Renji: We brought you an inflatable gigai.  
Karin: But I don't know how to use it!  
Renji: It was that or look like I was carrying a dead kid back to her grave…  
All: *twitch* Fair enough.  
Karin: *blows up the gigai* AHH! Why does it look like Urahara?  
Renji: But Yuzu can't-  
Karin: I REFUSE TO WEAR THAT THING!

**o)0(o**

**Bloomake!**

**o)0(o**

Ichigo ran up to the tomb, but no one was there. He must have imagined her.  
"WooooOOOoooooOooooo...!" creeled Karin, wriggling her arms creepily from behind the gravestone.  
He fainted.

**o)0(o**

**Dances With Hollows**

Substitute Kurosaki Ichigo is hailed as a hero after he accidentally leads shinigami troops to victory against the last of the Quincies (he dropped a stack of textbooks out of a fourth floor window at school, killing Ishida by mistake). He requests a position on the western frontier of Hueco Mundo, but finds it curiously deserted save for a lone Hollow he befriends and names 'Nel'.

As time passes he realises he is not alone, encountering a strange tribe of arrancars that reside in the distant castle Las Noches. To begin with they are wary of each other, but when they see him playing with Nel their suspicion softens and they nickname Ichigo 'Dances With Hollows'. As he is slowly accepted into their tribe he falls in love with the beautiful human woman 'Stands With A Leek', who was raised by the Espada after her Hollow brother pulled her into Hueco Mundo.

By the time Dances With Hollows has reconciled with his rivals 'Angst In His Eyes' and 'Kicking Panther', he has shed his human ways and become a vaizard. The chief 'Ten Coyotes' allows him to marry Stands With A Leek and together the tribe battles the shinigami forces. Nel is fatally wounded, and Ichigo realises he has to leave Hueco Mundo.

As Dances With Hollows and Stands With A Leek depart from the camp, Angst In His Eyes cries out from a distant sand dune that they will always be in his heart.

Shinigami scouts arrive to find the Hueco Mundo desert…mysteriously…empty…

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	33. Avaricious Avatars

**Hell Butterfly**

**Avaricious Avatars**

**~33~**

**o)0(o**

The Hollows were amassing.

Their heatless bodies crowding in a sea of black cockroaches, scaling the stone trees of the Menos no Mori like malformed lizards, squirming through the cold white sands of a desert that had never seen sunlight. Rank upon rank upon rank beyond number. Seeping through the cracks. The fallen souls of the world over.

Hearts ripped still beating from their chests and fashioned into clacking bone visors. Unique symbols of devastation.

Kido amplified Aizen's voice to every corner of the no man's land. He spoke without airs or condescension, words falling from the sky; drops of miraculous water upon the broken backs of the abandoned.

"Take me to the throne of God;"

No promise – solely a fact.

"And I shall make you whole again."

**o)0(o**

She was sitting in his closet for old time's sake, looking as smug as any cat. 'How's that?' her satisfied grin seemed to say. 'I bet no one else brought your sister back home to you. Am I awesome, or am I awesome?'

"Thank you," replied Ichigo to her unspoken yet heavily hinted prompts. He looked at the Chappy-themed products currently littering his floor in a plague of bunnies. Rukia had decided to treat herself – for what was technically insubordination. Not for the first time he wondered how bad of an influence he'd been on her. Or had the adopted Kuchiki always had a streak of anarchy a mile wide?

"So," mumbled Rukia around a mouthful of Chappy sweets. "Now that Karin is safe…" She pulled down her bunny-shaped sunglasses to shield her eyes from Ichigo's beaming smile at those words; "you're going to stop provoking your Hollow to fight you, right? We all need to get stronger, but whenever you do it you need expert supervision."

He rubbed his orange hair in thought. How to explain? "I wasn't really doing anything different then. The Hollow is always fighting me. It's not something that goes away, it just pretends to."

She fixed him with a blank stare and then reached for her sketchpad. "You materialised it with something meant for zanpakutos, which was already dodgy technology!" Tapping her felt tip marker against the hasty illustrations, she contrived to make him feel about three feet high. "This is you, and this is your stupidity level." Apparently he was a dot and his stupidity went right off the page. "You know if you give Hichigo an inch he'll take a mile."

"…Who?"

"Hichigo! Shirosaki Hichigo! It's your Hollow's codename!"

"You just made that up!"

"_What?_ They all have codenames – Grand Fisher! Acidwire!" At his look of bafflement she added "Inoue Sora was Acidwire!" impatiently. "Though Shirosaki Hichigo _was_ my idea. You should be thankful I gave him a cool name. Imbecile."

"I was happy with calling him 'it'," muttered Ichigo. "Dumbass."

She made his stupidity level higher by scrawling the extra length across his t-shirt. "As I was saying," continued the woman smoothly; "I'm not letting you train on your own again, so I've arranged for you to attend the Shinigami Academy until further notice."

**o)0(o  
**

So Ichigo found himself crammed into a lecture hall that was filled up way past capacity, two to a seat, and naturally he had to be squashed between Renji's lanky bulk and one of those crazy shinigami whose reiatsu sparked their growth into giants. The guy had introduced himself as a lieutenant – _yeah right_ – and then started chowing down popcorn.

"Good afternoon, my lovely colleagues and students!" Kyoraku Shunsui waltzed onto the stage at the front in a whirl of blossoms and pink haori. "You're looking stunning today, Soi Fon," he added with a wink.

Ichigo realised the taicho was sat behind him when she growled down his neck venomously. He stayed very still, hoping she couldn't see the hairs on the back of his neck prickling up. She, outraged at being stuck behind a newbie captain, her fukutaicho, and a substitute _vaizard_ of all people, was quite possibly the angriest person in the room, and there was no shortage of complaints from the others to begin with.

"We are gathered here today," Shunsui began with a grand and priestly air; "to celebrate the wedding of – just kidding, just kidding. But perhaps our bonds with our zanpakuto can be viewed as a marriage of sorts: a lifelong bond to another person, with their distinct opinions and personalities. It's something many of you unranked reapers wielding nameless asauchi swords fail to realise." He took a sip from a cup of clear liquid. It definitely wasn't water.

"Just thinking, 'what can my zanpakuto give me' isn't going to cut it. They're not tools. They are avatars of power, and we are in turn their proxies. And to tell you the truth, they're greedy. You may find yourself having to change a great deal before your sword gives you its name. Your attitude to battle, your method of fighting, your choice between fight and flight, will often be on their terms."

Several in the audience unconsciously leaned forwards. Rarely had they heard explanations like this.

"This is why the path to bankai is such a personal journey. Also why we tell you to meditate and perform jinzen rather than simply saying 'do this and this and this'. But now that we've rather run out of time…thanks to our old friend Sousuke, who likes to keep us on our toes… I have devised a ground-breaking demonstration to make it all much clearer and easier for you! Nanao-chan, would you step up here please?"

His second-in-command ascended to the stage, expression rather flat with suspicion. This was the first speech he'd given, and she had no idea what he was up to. Kyoraku grinned impossibly wide.

"Simply put, it is a shinigami's task to woo their zanpakuto like a beautiful young woman!"

There was a collective thud as several hundred reapers banged their heads against their desk in horror, trying to block out the mental images. Ichigo had a terrible vision of himself presenting Zangetsu with a bouquet of roses whilst Hichigo wept jealously in the background. He wasn't surprised when his neighbour spat popcorn all over the row in front. And Renji was rather green about the gills, muttering something about bestiality… Ichigo chose to block that out.

Shunsui laughed at their reactions, taking far longer than his audience did to be ready to continue. At last he coughed, straightened his posture and assumed an alluring face.

"Nanao-chan," he sighed, lovelorn. "Tell me why it is you don't like me…" He circled her like a lyrebird dancing in courtship.

His lieutenant bristled. "For starters you're a lazy waste of space who always reeks of alcohol and spends more on hairpins than renovations for our headquarters! Not to mention how you play cards all day long, wear a woman's dress like a cloak and never engage in battle when there's plenty to be had! You flirt with anything that moves and you don't understand personal space and you are a terrible judge of interdivisional politics! You're the son of a noble family and you barely go home once a decade! All you do is flop around! And your stubble annoys me!" She was heaving by the end, a book raised in her hand to strike him had she not remembered they were on stage.

Her captain seemed to melt in dismay. "Oh Nanao-chan! Clearly I have been going astray for the last thousand years of my life! Let me change for you! I will stop drinking so much," he laid his sake cup carefully on the ground; "and I will take some paperwork back home and go over it with my great-great-great-great-grandnephews and retainers. And I will refurbish the barracks immediately!" he cried with genuine revelation in his voice, discarding the flowery kimono with a dramatic flourish.

"Now," he asked her gently, resonating with unusual respectability and graveness. As though a powerful, role model taicho had been hidden beneath his cloak all along. "Do you hate me a little less, Nanao?"

"Well, uh…" stammered Ise, wrong-footed. "Yes, I guess so."

"Would you evacuate and demolish the Eighth Barracks in preparation for the replacements?"

She saluted him and exited the building immediately.

"And so you see!" cheered Shunsui, raising his arms at the crowd. "If we find out what our zanpakuto expect from us, we can build a mutually beneficial relationship and increase our power! Now if you'll excuse me, I must dash." He picked up his sake and chased after his fukutaicho.

"Nanao-chan…!" they heard him calling from the corridor, "that was a joke! Please don't blow up my buildings!"

**o)0(o**

A black cat strolled onto the stage in the resulting silence, sat down and began lick its paws clean. It turned its attention to its pointed ears, and then to fastidiously grooming its whiskers. It stretched, luxurious and slow.

"To continue today's lesson," it said offhanded; "we will give further examples and then one-to-one training sessions."

There was an uproar. Only a handful of people were unsurprised, and only one of them was squealing fanatically. Ichigo and Renji blocked their ears until Soi Fon's whistles and catcalls died down.

"What's this?" gasped the feline, watching its tail flick back and forth. "Cats can't talk! You must have all gone mad." A chorus of gasps and groans met its words. The cat waited a moment before adding, "and foxes can't wield swords either." A sly dig at Komamura-taicho.

Wriggling underneath Kyoraku's abandoned kimono, Yoruichi transformed and wrapped the lurid garment around her suddenly much taller and much less hairy human form. "At least she remembered to put clothes on this time," muttered Ichigo without thinking. Turning bright red when Renji did a double-take at him and Soi Fon elbowed him brutally in the skull.

"Clearly most of you don't know me," grinned Yoruichi, taking in the rows of less experienced shinigamis and giving her successor a cheery wave. "I am the head of the Shihouin Clan, Yoruichi. One of the most powerful people in Seireitei. So next time you see a cat, don't kick it."

One person at the back giggled nervously, and she glared at them. "I'm going to tell you about alternative strengths such as martial arts and flash stepping. They go hand in hand because greater speed gives greater power and impact. Obviously there's no shortcuts so if you're bad at them, forget it. But anyone who wants to learn how to temper their fists with reiatsu will meet me after. Until then I have a few warnings for you."

There was an expectant hush.

"Even if you make contact with your zanpakuto, or a stronger bond with them, they may not always be your best friend. For example, Hisagi Shuuhei-fukutaicho! His Kazeshini has nothing in common with him. It's a sadistic bastard, but that never held him back! Some are fickle, some are loyal, some are overeager, some are as changeable as the wind. We are in a war now, so whatever you find buried in your zanpakuto, don't be discouraged. None of us can afford to relax."

As one, every person in the room sat up straighter, rising to meet the weight of responsibility hitting their shoulders. The unknown future preyed on their minds, and many became impatient for the talks to be over. It was time to train, to spar, to fight.

"After the next lecture, your individual sessions will be arranged and I'll begin the intensive hakuda course. Alright, you're up!" she yelled at the next tutor, slinking off in the stolen kimono.

From out of the blue a firework exploded and rained hot sparks down upon the observers.

"I HOPE YOU'RE ALL PAYING ATTENTION NOW!" roared a familiar voice.

"Of course not!" bellowed back Ichigo, his spiky orange hair singed black in places. "We're trying to put the fires out!" The smoke cleared a little and Shiba Kuukaku scowled at her heckler from the podium. "Don't cross me, substitute punk. What are you doing here anyway?"

"Beats me, I already have bankai." He folded his arms and leaned back, shedding ash on Soi Fon. A few in the crowd who had been living under a rock for the past year and had never heard of him gasped in awe.

Kuukaku leered over him, arms akimbo. "But I'm teaching _kido_, Ichigo, and forgive me if I'm _wrong_, but I doubt you'll _ever_ be capable of kido, because your reiatsu just _oozes_ everywhere."

Ichigo leapt out of his chair and to the door in a burst of said messy reiatsu. That same insult again! Would they never just let it alone? He couldn't help if no one else was oozy! "Fine," he muttered darkly, hurt. "I'll go see Karin instead. See if I care about your stupid magic fireworks."

The reprieved noble threw one at his back in revenge. The substitute fled.

Behind, he could hear her opening the lesson.

"_Okay you lazy misfits! I'm the head of the noble Shiba Clan, who were in MOURNING, NOT EXILE, and my brother Ganju here will be your test dummy for all today's kido!"_

Wondering what Ganju could possibly have done wrong to get _that_ level of punishment, the spurned shinigami didn't look where he was going and ploughed straight into Inoue. She landed on the floor.

"Oh, it's you," he said, still somewhat awkward around her after the whole sorry-I-let-my-evil-alter-ego-invade-your-innermost-soul thing. It was very difficult to bring up. He couldn't even remember if he had apologised properly yet.

"Oh, Ichigo-kun! I was going to Kuukaku-san's kido lesson. She invited me." Orihime stood up and dusted herself off.

"Oh. It just started. You missed the fireworks."

"Oh. That's a shame."

"No, I mean literally. I think my hair caught fire."

"Oh!" she laughed, and he was slightly creeped out that she wasn't angry or upset at him. Maybe she was hiding it. For that matter, maybe Karin was hiding it all too. It wasn't a nice thought. "You know burnt hair is meant to taste very good in bird's nest soup, but Tatsuki wouldn't let me try it." Her grey eyes zoomed in on the charred strands in consideration.

"Uhh…you'd better get going or you'll miss the lecture," said Ichigo quickly and evasively. "See you later!"

"Bye bye!" chirped Orihime, continuing on her way with a smile. As the distance between them grew she wondered whether Hichigo also had burnt hair now, and that made her ponder who cut Hichigo and Zangetsu's hair, or maybe they just wore it long…

She entered the crammed classroom and squeezed in beside Renji, who generously explained the bits she was expected to know already despite it not being his best subject.

And at some point during the lesson, when her concentration span fizzled out and she began staring out the window, she considered the sleepwalkers marching around inside her soul, and wondered what Hichigo had seen there, and daydreamed about masks and tears and rain.

**o)0(o**

"You're very lucky, Ichigo. The nature of your sword is one that gives its all. It charges into war, it cuts completely with all of its being. Just like Tsubaki, it has infinite potential so long as you never hesitate. And Zangetsu gives himself to you the same way he gives himself to battle. A blind, headstrong attack. That's why you grow so strong so fast. I'm jealous; although I love my swords, they're ever so fickle. I have to wait for them to finish playing their games together before they'll ever play with me." Shunsui sighed, but not in a displeased manner. It had more in common with Isshin's proud sighs after being beaten up by any of his children.

Ichigo couldn't imagine a sword that was too busy playing to fight. He had assumed they were all like Zangetsu-ossan – imperious and unwavering old veterans.

"I wonder what he asks of you in return?" mused Kyoraku. He pinned Ichigo with a knowing stare, and the boy couldn't help answering.

"That's," _that's a pretty personal question,_ thought the substitute, yet the words came out unbidden. "…Hesitate and you will age. Retreat and you will die. Abandon your fear. Always move forward."

Shunsui whistled. "That's steep. Very steep to deny you any fear. No wonder you get ripped to rags every time you fight, with no natural caution. Lots of people are calling your zanpakuto a godsend, did you know that? A human child appearing at the advent of war, facing an army without running away, all these things. But it seems Zangetsu is a heavy enough burden that they don't need to be jealous."

"You think? I thought that was the only reason I survived, because he's unflinching."

"But would you have fought in the first place without his urging?"

That put a half-smile on the strawberry's face. Tatsuki in karate lessons, bullies that disliked his 'bleached' hair, anyone needing beating up on Chad's behalf, even the odd out and out war with Isshin when his patience really snapped…there was always another fight to get into.

"He could urge me to run away and I'd ignore him."

The captain laughed at him, a deep laugh. "Good for you! Although it's called foolishness, not bravery, to have no fear in war." He watched the young man glance up to Soukyoku Hill and the Shrine before answering. Many of his most intense experiences had revolved around that place, the dead centre of Soul Society.

"My fear is for the people I'm protecting," he said slowly. "If I couldn't save them, my life wouldn't be worth the fear of losing it."

There was a millennium in Shunsui's smile then. Every victory and loss he had ever seen, every dream and nightmare that had accompanied them on the path to now. "Don't break, Ichigo."

Ichigo considered this as the taicho gave a leisurely wave and wandered away. Don't get killed, sure. But don't break?

Way back at the beginning, when he'd been trying to channel both his own native powers and Rukia's through his nameless sword…when fighting the first Gillian back when Gillian were still scary…that huge blade had begun to twist and warp under the pressure and he'd felt himself snapping too.

Now that Zangetsu was with him…could that really still happen? His trust was such that he barely believed it possible, yet the idea still disturbed him. He looked up, a question on his lips. Kyoraku was gone. That was the extent of Ichigo's personal training.

He was used to getting a lot more attention than five minutes.

**o)0(o**

Ichigo was not the only person to receive coaching that day. The Gotei 13 seemed to have changed their minds about forbidding the girl with the fairies from fighting. Yet now they wished to encourage her in it, she once again rejected their opinions and shied away.

"Inoue-san. This is an act of healing also.

"Will you abandon these wrecks to a dismal, broken, hollow existence; or will you, as with your brother, see their hearts returned to them? Very few of these people," and the word fell from Unohana's mouth without guilt or fear; "truly throw their humanity away. Rather their _real_ souls are locked in white cages, where they will not shatter from the pain that the Hollows suffer without cease." Her hands delicately framed her face, as if holding a mask there. "The true role given a shinigami is a mission of mercy."

"I…don't mean to be weak. I wish I was strong enough to make a difference in this war. Back then I could only protect my friends by obeying when Aizen commanded me. Even when they were safe I wasn't strong enough to refuse him. And I don't even have the resolve to use Tsubaki in the way he's capable of." She stared at the ground, miserable. Tsubaki still hadn't forgiven her about that. She had the bump on her head to prove it.

"It's true that a lot of a shinigami's progress is physically impossible - but we are not dealing with physics here. They depend on mental and spiritual strength to use their zanpakuto. People like Zaraki, Kurosaki and Aizen are all unwavering in their beliefs."

"But I - but I can't help…feeling empathy for them, when I'm supposed to be killing them. I don't want to kill anyone."

"Inoue-san," said Retsu gravely; "the saddest thing in the world is for a Hollow to have no chance of redemption. A zanpakuto does not kill, it heals. You should have no regrets when you choose to battle."

Orihime shook her head, eyes filling with tears. "Unohana-san, I'm not a shinigami. The Shun-Shun Rikka are not zanpakutos. I don't know what I'm doing to anything Tsubaki kills, we might be –"

"Your powers are not equivalent to that of a Quincy, Inoue-san. Remember their form. A Hollow draws power only from itself. Sado-san's body changes when he fights. His strength comes from within. A Quincy draws reishi from his environment, and manipulates only his surroundings. A _shinigami_ gains her power through an avatar, and works in unison with her zanpakuto spirit. You've seen mine. Now considering this, what do you think the Shun Shun Rikka are?"

Orihime tried to wipe the tears of her outburst away. Once her sight was clear she looked Unohana full in the eye before answering. "They are not zanpakutos."

The shinigami was surprised, and showed it. "How do you mean?"

"They feel too different. The only person they've come close to was a…was a vaizard. But even he wasn't the same."

As she spoke Unohana was falling into that state of concentration where spirit threads became visible. A red ribbon surrounded herself, and - thankfully - a white one was attached to Inoue. But the surprise came from the six golden streamers flowing from Orihime's hairpins. She had never seen that colour of spirit thread before.

"Unohana-san," said Inoue with a mystified expression; "where do zanpakuto spirits even come from?"

The doctor shrugged, a whimsical smile hiding her shock at those streaks of gold. She knew the answer, yet it was not her secret to share.

"Where does the wind come from?"

**o)0(o**

Hitsugaya dragged his feet into the courtyard of the Tenth Offices and felt ready to collapse. An entire day of nonstop training and advising his squad, individually, was both physically and mentally exhausting. Berating the lazy ones into action, psychoanalyzing the confused ones that were a step away from meeting their zanpakutos, tailoring exercise routines to bring out the strength of the beefy ones, experimenting on the finer details of kido with his officers…

He wanted to curl up in a nest of paperwork with a bowl of sweets and hibernate for the next week…

Perhaps he should appoint a new fukutaicho to ease the strain, but if there were any suitable among his ranks he would have replaced Matsumoto long ago. (He had been telling himself this for years. It was a total lie.)

Oh, Matsumoto.

His fatigue doubled in an instant. He sat down against the nearest wall, eyes burning from salty tears that never dropped.

A football smacked him in the face and rebounded with a plasticky _twank!_

"KARIN!" he roared, punching the ground and flinging his head back. His neck was already sore from craning up at hideously tall adults all day and _now this?_ She could kick like a mule on steroids!

His snapping green eyes fixed upon the culprit.

Ichigo.

Hitsugaya scrambled up in a panic. He was no coward, but this was an irrational, hormonal teenager with a habit of taking powerful governments by storm, and he had personally imprisoned and stabbed said teenager's sister through the heart.

Karin appeared at his side, looking devilishly innocent. "It's your own fault Toushiro. If you looked less like a goalpost, footballs wouldn't keep hitting you in the face all the time!"

Ichigo blinked at his sister. "How often do you…?"

"I can't help it," she shrugged. "He's so repressed. If he didn't have someone to shout at he'd just explode and die and there'd be blood and mess everywhere and stuff."

Toushiro and Ichigo sized each other up. There was no doubt they had history. Ichigo had kindly helped him kill his best friend again when Sojiro Kusaka had returned as a Hollow to seek vengeance against the Soul Society he had once served. Toushiro had helped _him_ kill his little sister when she came to lay waste to Seireitei because she was a heartless mindless arrancar and felt like it. They were quits, surely.

"I…" started Ichigo, unreadable.

The captain cringed slightly.

"I can't thank you enough," said Ichigo finally, not sure what prompted him to lean forwards slightly and ruffle the hair of a kid that had been killing Hollows since before the Kurosaki siblings were born. It was probably Karin's influence. But it was the last straw.

Hitsugaya caught the substitute's arm and judo flipped him into the dirt. Karin burst out laughing and Ichigo swore loudly through a mouthful of earth.

That had taken his last shred of energy: Toushiro crumpled. Karin abruptly stopped laughing and snapped into Nurse Mode.

"Ichi-nii! He's suffering from exhaustion! Carry the patient to his bed!"

"I don't know where-"

"Oh, you're useless! I'll show you the way!"

Her brother climbed to his feet and stooped to gather up the little fallen taicho. Instinct made him pause suspiciously. "How do _you _know where his bed is?"

"He usually falls asleep on the sofa in his office." The innuendo completely flew over her head. But Karin was no fool, so she figured it out when they were halfway through the corridors.

"What kind of person do you think he _is?_" she burst out suddenly, whirling to face her nii-san.

Ichigo sniggered; it was wonderful to have her back, and so much fun to tease her. "I think he's a century-old man in a child's body who just found a girl who's not three feet taller than him," said the guy with a straight face.

"Forty," she corrected him; "and you're gross, Ichi-nii."

"I'm just messing with you," he replied, sticking his tongue out at her. Karin responded by pulling horrible faces at him as they continued to the unconscious captain's office.

Once they were out of earshot, the paper-thin door to the canteen slid open and a dozen seated officers peered out.

"…Who wants to place bets on the taicho?"

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

Zangetsu and Hichigo studied the mental image that was being displayed in cinematic clarity across the sky of their world. It showed Ichigo on bended knee with a feathered hat and felt-tip Baron moustache courtesy of Rukia, presenting an enormous bunch of roses dripping with curly ribbons and glitter to his zanpakuto, with his free hand clasped against his heart. Hichigo was spotlighted in a dark shadow to one side of the scene, sobbing bitterly as he was refused any gifts at all. Sparkles and bubbles were everywhere.

"Well, it would be good to have some plants here," admitted Zangetsu. "Maybe a mountain or river. And a couple of nice shrubberies with a little path running between them."

"_And a pet dog."_

"I prefer cats, myself."

"_How about a sofa?" _The sword and the horse sighed dreamily.

"It's a shame he's convinced we _like_ balancing on flagpoles. I'd like to see him try it."

"_Well, queenie Orihime's world didn't have sofas either,"_ said the Hollow by way of comfort.

A vast red X flashed on and off over the mental image as Ichigo rejected it, and the two men below did indeed sob bitterly…

**o)0(o**

"Okay, Orihime, show me what you've learned!" ordered Kuukaku, puffing on her pipe. Orihime laughed nervously, she'd been away with the fairies for the second half of the lessons. Metaphorically, not literally. Nevertheless, she would try her best at kido.

"The depressed jelly bean unveils its gelatinous resolution; with red pride it conquers Candy Mountain: sugar cane trees bow at its passing, divine chocolate slakes its hunger! Sherbet light dusts its glorious form! Destructive Kido number eleventy-one - SUGAR HIGH!" A vast multi-coloured laser blasted from her fingertips and turned the entire street into Genocide by Chocolate.

Inoue stared, eyes almost bugging out of her head. _What have I done?_

Kuukaku leaned over and tasted a white chocolate brick with golden buttercream icing cement and strawberry flavoured dust. She let it melt in her mouth for a few seconds.

"Yep, you pass!"

**o)0(o**

The bets were going extremely well until Ichigo slammed the door open, Zangetsu drawn, and forbade them from corrupting his baby sister on pain of death.  
Luckily Rukia appeared behind and gave him a Vulcan nerve pinch.  
He collapsed to the floor, eyes spinning.  
"Allow me," said Rukia happily, taking the bets book and drawing a Karin-bunny and an Ice-bear on the cover. "Okay, we'll start off with whoever guesses the closest time frame wins half the kitty, and then I'll take bets on how it happens. Who's first?"  
A score of hands shot into the air.

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	34. Basilisk

**Hell Butterfly**

**Basilisk**

**~34~**

**o)0(o**

Ichigo requested a detour as they walked home that day, and now the two redheads were wandering aimlessly through some quiet corner of Karakura behind the mall. Eventually Ichigo came to a grudging halt. They were in a deserted courtyard between warehouses.

"Inoue," he asked haltingly; "what exactly happened when my Hollow was inside you?"

Her lips moved soundlessly as she frantically searched for an answer that wouldn't scare him. _Killed a bunch of sleeping people but they got better?_ "H-he just looked around… I'd never been there before either, you know; I don't know if anything was different to what it should be."

The boy scratched at his hair, offered a half-smile in sympathy. "It scared the crap outta me the first time. I thought I was going to fall off a skyscraper and splat on the ground."

"Really? So everyone has an inner world?" For a moment she was distracted by glittering mental images of all the different soulscapes: Ishida-kun's would be built of patchwork embroidery and textbooks, and Yachiru's would be full of lollipops…

"I guess so. Mine's this big empty city with screwed up gravity," Ichigo gestured vaguely, it felt slightly taboo to discuss the shape of his soul so casually. "I'm always standing on the walls. And Zangetsu says it rains a lot."

"Mine was just a crowd of sleepwalking people. I didn't really like it; it felt like they might be talking behind my back. And I didn't recognise any of them," she mumbled.

"Are you sure?" pushed Ichigo, because the only thing he'd been able to guess from his Hollow's ranting was that it had seen something it knew. When she shook her head he stepped closer. "And that, uh, Hichigo, he didn't either?"

Caught in his stare, Orihime realised she had never noticed the flecks of gold in his warm brown eyes before. They were pretty, yet slightly unnatural. "I didn't talk to him," she replied. Hesitant. "I only saw him from a distance."

Ichigo sighed and walked behind her…

…then the Hollow breathed in her ear, "_What did I tell you about lying?"_

The girl screamed and leapt away from him by reflex, her arms covering her head instinctively as if bombs were falling from the sky. Yet every time she turned to face her fears he would step behind her back, so that she was left whirling round in a panic until dizzy without once catching sight of him. The disembodied voice cooed with sarcastic kindness.

"_You look scared, Hachimitsu._"

"Who? M-maybe you've got the wrong victim, you should try um, um, terrorising someone else," babbled his prey. She was backing away even though the words were hissing against the nape of her neck. She couldn't think straight. "I won't taste good! I eat weird food!"

"_Don't be so frightened, I'm Ichigo, remember?"_ As soothing as a nest full of maggots, the Hollow rested its cold hands on her waist, and her stomach lurched queasily. _"That guy you've loved for five lifetimes, na?"_

She shook her head mutely, could feel her hair hit his face; he was so close behind her.

"_I know you better than anyone else does. I know Ichigo better than he does too."_ It had to keep talking to resist the urge to kill her welling up. Instinct was a tough habit to kick. _"All that Soul Awakening disease shit. Whenever His Highness's past starts to wake up, I eat it. Knowledge is power…"_

Swallowing hard, she dared ask what the devil wanted with her. It snorted dismissively; it had little interest in such a pitiful weakling as her.

"So you met Hhh-Hachimitsu in me," guessed Orihime, anxious. "But that…doesn't mean you won't kill me…"

"_No it doesn't,"_ agreed the Hollow, placing a hand on her auburn head. She froze, feeling the strength in those fingers to crush her skull like an egg. _"But I reckon an all-powerful death-cheating queenie like you could screw with time a bit and turn back into an older incarnation."_ The pressure increased. _"It's better than dying, right?"_

Inoue's legs began to shake. "What good would it do you?" she whimpered.

"_You can't _do_ good to a Hollow."_

Now the demon prowled into her field of vision, and she remembered that Ichigo had been in his real body, had, in fact, thought that made him safe. The dark reiatsu was spilling over, a breached dam. Ghostly claws extended from his human hands, a thick white tail unravelled from the middle of his back. The familiar frown had become an alien sneer. A translucent mask flickered over his face, hair overlong, shoulders hunched. There was a strange coppery tang in the air: the taste of spilt blood and the smell of rot that hung around Hollows as their cores eroded. Two opposite Ichigos superimposed. It made her feel sick and faint, especially as every cruel word the beast spat came from Ichigo's own mouth.

"_You'll never get him, stupid princess. It's inevitable that I'll win. The King will crumble and fall, once I've devoured his soul from the inside out, one memory at a time. I'll be every person you've ever loved."_

Orihime closed her eyes, trying to block him out. "But you're not real."

"_I still exist. I'm still the only thing you have left."_

"No!" the girl shouted suddenly, rebelling as he crossed the line. "You're not Ichigo! You're just everything he tries to push away! You're not a soul, or a person, or anyone at all, you don't even have a real _name_. All those memories that empower you don't belong to you. You're a mask, a shell, empty space. _Nothing._" She was whispering by the end, eyes damp as she remembered the warped lie calling itself her brother. The Hollow he had been before coming to his senses. Mutated by loneliness.

_"I know exactly what I am. I'm a horse. Not even a noble steed, just a workhorse. The kinda horse you flog till it keels over then chop up for the knacker yard to turn into glue and dog meat."_ His long arm stretched out, covering her eyes and gripping her face, the thumb forced into her mouth to flatten her tongue down; like the blinkers, bridle and bit used in horse tack for control.

"_I'm the bad moods, the worst behaviour. I'm not just a parasite taking over, I'm him in every sense of the word, but I'm what's left when you take everything away from a person."_ The other hand caught her wrists as she scrabbled for release, and now the hybrid Hollow-Ichigo stepped right up against her, treading on her feet to trap her.

"_We're the two sides of the moon, and sometimes there's a dark new moon, but even when it shines I'm lying underneath, standing right behind him, breathing down his neck. But I can't move."_ And the last snare was a white lizard tail coiling round her stomach, the wavy red patterns on its tip drawing tighter and tighter with the strength of an iron band, so that she couldn't even struggle.

She strained her muscles, kicked and twisted and bit her teeth into him – on the surface not shifting an inch. Blinded, silenced, immobilised, Orihime felt hot saltwater burn her eyes as panic overwhelmed her.

"_We paralyse each other. Just like this."_ That corroded scrawl of a voice echoed through her skull. Petrifying. _"Doesn't it make you wanna kick and fight? But you can't."_

Inoue attempted to summon the Shun Shun Rikka, to awaken them without words, yet even Hichigo's reiatsu was swamping and drowning out her own. Submerging her in rusty caustic.

"_Now you're itching to kill me, aren't ya. It's the only glimmer of a chance you got. Between equals, who is thrown away or throws away is down to instinct. And I'll fight till I'm the one discarding him, the one with control," –tighter- "and choice," -crushing- "and freedom!" _

_breaking_

Its grin was intense.

Constricted until she lost her breath, the girl began to see stars dance across the darkness. Why did no one sense it?

Tensed, praying for Ichigo to come to his senses, for Ishida to save the day, for Karin to appear as Tenebra Shirojos and banish the Hollow once again, for Yoruichi or Ulquiorra or even Aizen; anything, anyone, _rescue_.

**o)0(o**

Escape came at the Hollow's whim; Inoue was released and flung away, colliding with a wall. She coughed and hacked, gulped air ravenously, the bricks all that kept her upright. Like the drumming of rain her heart pounded frantically. She wished someone would come. She hoped no one would come. They'd only die. Ichigo-kun was the sole person who could fix this.

Ichigo was far, far away.

A crimson streaked mask tilted in her direction, measuring.

"_I lost this intoxicating thing," _

It came closer, closer, step by calm step, she could not escape.

"_Found all the memories of things I could never regain,"_

Red-black flames lapped at its feet, reiatsu heat haze distorting Inoue's sight and making the monster ever more terrifying. She wanted her legs to run, her lungs to shout for help, Tsubaki to shoot forth in a blaze of deadly light. Nothing.

"_Caught a little firebird that could defy the laws of nature…"_

The cruel bone face leered above, its ashen claws upon her, pinning her to the wall. Orihime began to sob, begging, swearing to do whatever it asked, shaking her head limply in a tumble of sweat-soaked hair, vowing never to lie again. Hichigo laughed madly, taunting her as it did the King, goading with those simple words that became nightmare fuel.

"_I'm close now, so close! Closer all the time! Just a sliver away! I'm so close to owning everything again! So near I can touch it, close enough to taste it…"_

Two rows of razor sharp teeth pressed against her mouth, not cutting into her lips, fused to a jaw that rarely opened. Behind the mask the Hollow whispered deadly sweet nothings.

"_Though I still don't know how to eat without obliterating it… You might have to stick yourself back together again after…"_

Mechanically aware that she was about to die, Orihime allowed a numbing state of shock to swallow her, if only it would dampen the pain to follow. She gave in and fell limp, a boneless ragdoll. Hopeless.

Mirroring her, the Hollow also became completely still. She was beyond noticing.

**o)0(o**

Fighting through the mass of tar-like reiatsu, Ichigo threw himself into battle against his alter ego with every ounce of effort he had. He had no idea how long he had been struggling for, ten minutes or ten years. He did not know what Hichigo had been doing with his unexpected freedom, could barely remember where he'd been before the Minus dragged him into the pitch black. It had come from nowhere, none of the warnings, none of the usual mind games. A silent, effective ambush.

Breaking the surface at last, the shinigami looked up to find the sky blotted out by a vast mask. The smooth inner side faced him; the fierce rictus baring its fangs at the outer world. Zangetsu was nowhere to be seen. Glaring and gritting his teeth, the toppled king leapt into the air and smashed his fists into the barrier.

It crumbled, plumes of white powder exploding around him. Ichigo spat chalk dust from his mouth and measured how much of the imprisoning wall was left.

Plenty.

He rammed his shoulder against it to little effect, finally settling on digging through. Dense, sparking blue reiatsu oozed from his hands, the infamous flood of power little could stand against. Deep cracks began to rupture the entire mask, disintegrating, an avalanche of pale slabs thundering down.

"This is my body, and this soul is me," snarled Ichigo, for an instant sounding as ruthless and deadly as the Hollow itself. "I won't let you have it. You can't take me from myself."

The beast heard its master approach, and screamed despair.

**o)0(o**

Ichigo felt the moment of transition as the two sides of his soul swapped, motionless, vulnerable; then daylight flooded his vision and he could breathe again. Blinking the Hollow's ink from bleary eyes, as the irises faded from murderous gold to natural brown, he sighed in relief.

The sigh was blocked by something.

Focusing on the real world, he found it to be full of Orihime. She stared straight through him without seeing, pupils tiny pinpricks of terror. Her face was puffy with red marks that the doctor's son could easily tell would turn into swollen bruises later. And because her chest was crushed against his, he could feel that she was barely breathing.

They were so close that he could count every eyelash, list every symptom of abject fear in exacting detail.

It was the day of Masaki's death all over again.

He stepped back in a daze, every nerve shivering, and Inoue slid down the wall like jelly.

When she hit the ground she gasped, jolted back to life. She was surprised the life was there at all. A shadow fell over her and she flinched bodily. Someone was kneeling in front of her.

"…Orihime?"

Exhausted, she nodded; that sounded familiar enough.

"…What did I do to you?"

The sentence was quiet and loathe to emerge. The spinning of her mind began to slow down and she realised Ichigo had returned. She whispered, dried out. "You came back in time."

He was distressed despite her optimistic reply. "I meant – why was the Hollow kissing you!" snapped the vaizard. It went completely against everything he knew for a Hollow to do such a thing; it meant the Hollow was changing somehow, perhaps swallowing more of its master's humanity, it meant something terrifying – he just couldn't grasp what.

"It…it…" she shivered, not wanting to say anything, because if Ichigo ceased trusting himself around her there would be consequences. "…said…it would bite my tongue out for lying…"

He was scared, and the fear was written all over him. He backed away from her, repelled. Orihime endeavoured to stand up and pretend that she was fine, anything to make him stop seeing sense; adding yet another lie to the Hollow's list.

"You won't kill me, Ichigo!"

"If my mother and sister weren't safe from my bad luck, what makes you think you will be?" he barked suddenly, baring a haunting deep-buried thought to the daylight.

She shrank down to the ground again. "…So you want me to leave?" Because that was what she had been taught as a child, by Sora. Do not stay and fight, because personal troubles could not be erased by violence. Flee, build a new life, never look back. _Consequences_.

"No, I want you to be safe. I want everyone to be safe!" It wasn't fair that all the power he attained in order to protect was turning into poison. It broke his heart, grinding him down and feeding him to the Hollow in turn, speck by speck.

"How can I heal you when I'm not here?" _How can I bring you back from the dead if I don't know you're dead? How can I make _you_ safe from far away? How can I li-_

"I never asked you to leave!But –_" _Ichigo faded to silence. It was an impossible situation. He stared at the sky helplessly. It was clear and cloudless as dusk approached, but internally Zangetsu was no doubt being lashed by torrential rain.

"…I still haven't saved anyone, have I?"

"_Rukia_," replied Inoue immediately; Rukia once again the only person who could be there for Ichigo in the ways he needed. "Never forget Rukia. You saved her."

_But not you_, said his face; and she heard the divides slam down between them.

**o)0(o**

The Hollow trashed skyscraper after skyscraper, gutting the contents, laying the shells and infrastructure bare to the ferocious elements. A gale howled, threatening to rip him away but he never fell, flinging handful after handful of jagged glass into the storm where it could shimmer and tumble like raindrops.

It was useless, of course. That he was still trapped down here in this infinitely spacious cage was evidence enough. An uncomfortable truth: all his savage hunting only fortified Ichigo at an equal rate. They truly were one being.

Returned once again to square one.

King and Horse. Instinct. That essential inborn quality that he had scorned the shinigami for not having only to be proven wrong time after time after time.

The Hollow bit the head off yet another faded old incarnation, crushing it in his jaws, revelling in the sour rush of memories.

There are plenty of lives to choose from. If it's instinct that's broken, learn a new instinct.

Evolution.

Resurrección.

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	35. A Dragon's Treasure

**Hell Butterfly**

**A Dragon's Treasure**

**~35~**

**o)0(o**

Toushiro awoke to a steaming cup of tea and a warm blanket draped over him. The familiar ceiling of his office and the familiar frustrated exhalation of his lieute- no, wait. Of course not. He cracked an eyelid open to see who the frustrated exhalation belonged to.

Karin, of course, sat at his desk, in his chair, reading his private papers. She had a cat-like sense of curiosity and a similarly imminent death.

"I thought I told you not to read my files anymore," he croaked. She nearly jumped out of her skin.

"Ah! What? No, this is a letter from my sister. Ichi-nii gave me it. You don't write in sparkly purple gel pen, do you?" She was reading it so closely the pages brushed her nose, as if it smelt of Yuzu's cooking and she yearned for the scents of home. Her host groaned to himself as he sat up. She glanced over and said nothing as he stole her cup of tea. How rude.

"What got you so tired before?" asked the Kurosaki girl, turning one of the sheets over. Yuzu had been having a difficult time, now pouring her heart out in the letter. Karin was frustrated because there was nothing she could do from here better than write a reply and wait for a passing death god to post it. She didn't like putting her feelings down on paper, so public and vulnerable. She'd probably just fill it with jokes about communing with the Other Side and Ouija boards and the daily mission to drive her saviour round the twist. Poor Yuzu. She'd think her twin was being unsympathetic.

"I had a strenuous day," replied her saviour eventually; "and it's about to start again."

"Nnn, you're only going to do personal training today. Doctor's orders," she informed him, adding; "That's me."

"I'll adjust to the new schedule in a few days. That counts as personal training."

"No, I really think you should practise with your sword today." She put the letter down and stared at him avidly.

He finished the tea and rubbed the sleep from his eyes before responding. His hair felt like it was sticking up in all the wrong directions. Not that anyone would notice. "What exactly are you after?"

"I saw so many cool swords today when you were snoring! A load of weird looking guys were training outside and yelling stupid catchphrases like Don Kanonji does and they said it was called shikai and stuff was transforming and shooting fireballs all over the place!"

Whilst she paused for breath he noted that she probably didn't get much of that in Karakura. Karin shrugged and made a so-so gesture.

"And?" He was still waiting for an explanation.

"So I want to see yours too, stupid!"

"It's _Hitsugaya-taicho_. Not 'stupid'." It was petty, but clearly things had to be spelt out for the girl. "I'm actually a genius and the youngest ever to achieve captain rank."

"Oh of course the youngest," snorted Isshin's daughter. "I could tell that just by looking."

Hitsugaya-taicho was far too mature to rise to her bait, and left the room in dignified silence.

"Yeah, run off and sulk," taunted Karin, turning back to Yuzu's letter.

**o)0(o**

A quick scout around showed that everyone was busy working on the improvements they had discussed yesterday, so Hitsugaya retired to his private rooms. Very few knew the location of his quarters and he liked it that way. There had to be at least one thing in his afterlife that was not at the Gotei's beck and call.

For whenever he truly needed some alone time, Toushiro would escape back to Upper Rukongai and his Obaa-chan's old house.

She herself was not so long gone, but he sat cross-legged on her faded red cushion in memory and laid Hyourinmaru's blade across his lap in preparation for jinzen. He was already in a better mood from the peace and quiet. Isolation suited him a little too well sometimes.

"Hyourinmaru," he coaxed aloud; "would you meet with me?"

Darkness swallowed him and spat him back out onto frozen tundra, wreaths of chilly mist coiling like insubstantial snakes in all directions. Shadows filled every acre of sky, grimmer than before. It hadn't been this murky in years and years. Far away a single eye was regarding him, a glowing red speck in the distance.

Toushiro ran towards it without hesitation. His zanpakuto was the last person he would ever act reticent towards. Yet minutes later the dragon had drawn no closer. His pattering footsteps dwindled to nothing.

"What's the matter?" begged the boy in a puff of condensation. "Are you angry with me?"

_It is you who has weakened our bond, never I. I am loyal. I am unchanging. I am the ice at the poles of the world that never melts. Your mistrust insults me, Hitsugaya-taicho._

The voice of Hyourinmaru rumbled slowly across the vast space separating them, bitter and estranged when it arrived.

"When have I ever distrusted you?" His mind raced. Was it because he had fled from Tenebra Shirojos, executed her within the Shrine rather than dare face her head on? He could think of no other time… "Did I act out of cowardice?"

He thought, he hoped that crimson light grew slightly. Solitude was easy with the ice spirit always within him, but without…that would be the final fall into loneliness.

_A prodigy need not question that. It was a horrific opponent dispatched with swift wisdom. Not even lost in Konsou. No, you may call that your reigning triumph. But it was from that same day forth you lost your faith in me._

Toushiro swallowed hard, clenching and unclenching his hands. He didn't know what he had done wrong and the uncertainty was unnerving. He always knew where he stood, always understood the situation, was never lost for a path of action. This felt like the ground had been stolen from beneath his feet. And to think so many he knew _lived_ in this state! Small wonder Momo had a breakdown, and how did Ichigo survive those monumental changes he was forever suffering?

"I, I don't know what to do," stammered the man trapped in a child's body. "I don't understand what you mean." The admittance burned his tongue; he couldn't remember ever saying those words before. "I only thought we needed to grow stronger together – everyone aims for that? _You_ aim for that?"

The scarlet eye closed, slowly, Hitsugaya jolted forwards a pace as if he could catch the ember before it died. "Please Hyourinmaru! _Please!_ There must still be countless things for me to learn about you – aren't you the most powerful of your kind? The-the Heavenly Guardian who reincarnates – if I'm insufficient, can't I learn from your former wielders?"

Coils of ice surrounded him in an instant, imprisoned like a serpent's prey. The wyrm towered above him. _So desperate! So insecure! So unfaithful! Does Seireitei not deem it taboo to share the same zanpakuto as another? Do they not apply that to techniques as well? It is an indolent approach for one so talented. And after taking all else from your friend – his zanpakuto, his right to life, and now his very methods or behaviour?_

"Kusaka Sojiro," gasped Toushiro, the friend who had been executed for the crime of bearing the same sword. "No, no. I'm sorry, Hyourinmaru, deeply sorry. I don't know what I'm saying anymore." He crouched down, biting his fist in distraction. If nothing else, to stopper his babbling mouth. When had he become so unhinged? The mere mention of Hyourinmaru being displeased had reduced him to…what?

Bluish and translucent, the dragon's long jaws and frozen fangs hovered perilously close over his small hunched form. _Fool. What a blind fool you are, Hitsugaya Toushiro. I am only a half of the Guardian, that legendary white angel who descends once in a century._

Submissive, quiet. "…If I am not your destined partner, I beg you to tolerate me until the war is over at least…"

Hyourinmaru roared in his ears, shocking him with blasting cold that he normally never felt. _Witless man! There is only one, we do not pick and choose at a whim! Blame it upon Konsou's whimsy if a single soul is born in different eras and enters Soul Society at the same time! The path of Konsou is not a thing of space or time, it cannot tell the difference._

Toushiro couldn't speak, astounded. "We…we were the same?"

_Now you wish to call me a liar? It is as if I am trying to tell you my name again, I speak and speak yet you do not hear. Who am I? Who are we?_

Turquoise eyes gazed up from the glacial cage. "Hyourinmaru, the Heavenly Guardian."

_The heavenly guardian of what? You have despised the Central 46 since the arbitrary execution of Sojiro. They killed another you, sent him mad, caused him and I to seek heartless retribution. See how I did not abandon either of you in your darkest time of insanity? When the whole of Seireitei was hunting you down!_

_Your oldest friend is infatuated with a murderous traitor, your fukutaicho died in the arms of yet another. Your former captain is a human hiding in a world where you cannot stay. Even your grandmother passed on in her own time. Soul Society holds no true friends for you now, and the Soutaicho has made mistakes. You do not make bonds easily and you have lost them all._

_I am a dragon, yet where is my treasure? There is nothing I value here. I have nothing to fight for._

_Even you my wielder have shunned and doubted yourself. Now you complain that I am weak, that I do not give you my all._

_But have you given me a single reason to freeze the heavens?_

There was no response. Toushiro remained silent and shell-shocked even when the vast scarlet eyes of the dragon descended and shone directly into his own.

Eventually the zanpakuto shivered all along its great length, a flurry of snow tumbling down to settle upon the shinigami. _Do not show your jaded face to me again without tribute. There is nothing Heavenly in a Guardian who has nothing to protect._

**o)0(o**

Karin folded the letter she had written carefully and slid it into the envelope with painstaking care. She then had fun stamping the envelope all over in red ink with a set of fancy-looking seals she had dug out of Hitsugaya's drawers. When she ran out of space she stuck a ribbon to the front and proudly placed her masterpiece onto the taicho's Outgoing pile.

Sighing, she stared at the clock and wondered when – "Toushiro!"

He stood there uneasily, looking a stranger in his own doorway – and he was shredded. There were shallow cuts and deep grazes making a patchwork of his arms and face, dried blood turning bits of his white hair a murky yellow and somehow had frozen half of his shihakusho solid.

"What happened to you?"

"Personal training." He entered the room with the slightest of limps and began to dig through a corner cupboard for a new uniform. As he pulled it out a few sheets of paper drifted to the carpet that he regarded unhappily. That was a form for him to deny Matsumoto access to the Tenth Squad budget. Signed and stamped. How long ago had the crafty woman hidden it there?

"That doesn't mean you had to be the target!" squawked Karin, trying to catch his attention. Her upbringing kicked in, but he replied to her requests for aspirin, antiseptic and wound dressings with a blank stare. The stare continued for a long time until she uncomfortably turned away.

No, thought Hitsugaya. She was human now. Young, but relatively short-lived, soon to outgrow him. She would never regain any powers and eventually would move out into Rukongai. If she survived the war it would be because Aizen had no interest in a sabotaged project, and if no enemies targeted her she wouldn't require active protection. If Aizen did want her dead there were countless ways the bastard could dispose of such a fragile baby.

Even though she happily ignored his antisocial nature and could even be called his friend…Kurosaki Karin still wasn't sufficient to tempt Hyourinmaru back to his side.

"I woke up in a room full of icicles and had to climb out a window. These are all surface wounds; they can be healed with kido in ten minutes once I go to the hospital."

He didn't reveal how scared he was of his sword's rebellion. Besides, Toushiro had awoken with the dragon's final warning echoing in his head. _I will test them._ What kind of test could a girl without a hint of reiatsu survive? Hyourinmaru's tests were never gentle.

He moved her out the way of the door as easily as a feather.

"See you later."

**o)0(o**

"Ukitake-taicho is sick!" said Kiyone loudly. "Can't see anyone!" shouted Sentaro.

Rukia cuffed them both round the head. "And he needs quiet! My apologies, Hitsugaya-taicho. Jyuushiro-san is really not capable of business right now."

"It's not business," said Toushiro, and walked straight past them. When he reached the captain's rooms he knocked gingerly and said "Ukitake? It's Hitsugaya."

Silence.

He leaned his head against the door and looked slightly embarrassed. "It's Shiro-chan, here to see Shiro-chan, and it doesn't involve work."

The sliding door glided open immediately. A basket of sweets was thrust under his nose. "Excellent timing Shiro-chan. I'd just got these for you last week. How are you?"

There was some watermelon and amanetto hidden in there. He felt his face crease up uncontrollably, his reply emerging as a blend of squeak and hiccup. "H-Hyourinmaru left me…"

He was dragged into the room and pushed into a sitting position by the low table in seconds. The door clacked shut and Jyuushiro's worried face filled his vision. "Have a sweet. Explain."

Toushiro shook his head, trying not to cry. It seemed so possible when Ukitake was around. Wise, kind, strong, someone he highly respected, and where no one else would overhear. A friend. Exactly what he needed. But not really one that needed any protection from the youngest among the captains.

He saw the blood-soaked handkerchief poorly hidden beneath the table. Jyuushiro truly was ill again, and a thousand-year-old tuberculosis condition wasn't something Hitsugaya could save him from either. "Why can't Unohana or Kurotsuchi heal your sickness?" asked the boy in preference to talking about his own troubles.

"Well, Retsu-chan tried, but it returns eventually. I just seem to be built that way. So don't worry about it, and tell me what the matter is with Hyourinmaru."

"The matter is that all of my handful of friends are dead or demented or both," said the younger bleakly, triggering a fresh wave of almost-tears. "Hyourinmaru has abandoned me because I don't care about anyone and he has nothing to guard and, and, people were always so scared of me that I won't make new friends in time for the war. I wouldn't even care about these new ones. I'd only be using them as bait to get my zanpakuto back. I-I-I just lost my right to be a captain…_moments before the war began_…"

Jyuushiro patted his shoulders apologetically. "Clearly that's not the case; you wouldn't be so upset if you didn't care about anyone in Soul Society. And did you forget that Hyourinmaru will always have you to protect for his own sake, as you do him?"

"It's different," he rejected the ideas; "it has to be a burning passion to protect, to balance out the ice. It has to be…um…"

"Love, not duty. I've heard of this before with other shinigami. Sometimes I think zanpakutos say it to make their shinigamis get out more."

Hitsugaya ate some sweets to hide his embarrassment, the weighting of love and duty in his life was something like 5% vs. 95% at the best of times.

"You're very cold," noticed Ukitake, frowning. He drew his hands away to shield a loud hacking cough. Toushiro's eyes shot wide open. This had happened before, with Obaa-chan. She had nearly frozen to death at the touch of his untrained reiatsu. It was the sole reason he had become a shinigami in the first place. For the sake of a single person he had gained a zanpakuto great enough to protect the entire sky.

"I should go," said the boy hurriedly in a cloud of cold steam. He stood up and realised his hands were turning blue from the chill as they reached for the bowl of sweets and fruit. "Thank you, Shiro-san, for listening."

"Anytime at all, Shiro-chan," replied the white-haired man with a painful smile, though charmed by Hitsugaya's use of the nickname. "Please don't wait for an emergency next time. I enjoy seeing you."

Toushiro nodded quickly. A frigid feeling was settling deep into his bones that reminded him of vague terrifying memories he would rather ignore. "I, um…"

"Go straight to the Soutaicho," advised Ukitake. Shiro-chan bowed in farewell and vanished.

**o)0(o**

The founder stands over the chick, the youngest in his flock of officers. The one who they all believe will bear power the likes of which they have never seen. When he comes to fruition, given time.

Alas it is not the future yet, and times are hard.

The dragonet is curled up halfway across his office floor, managing only to cross the doorframe before succumbing to hypothermia. He is scared but not alarmed; the sensation of freezing to death is familiar: it is not the first time.

The Soutaicho bends down as a mountain sways. His weathered form hunching to the ground is a sight unseen by most. One strong old hand reaches out and brushes the beads of ice from the child's face.

"They make demands of us," he says in sympathy, voice reverberating; "that in the beginning seem so simple, so beneficial. Do not hesitate. Do not lie. Do not forget. Do not lose your reason. Do not hate. Yet these requests form the base of our behaviour from then on, and to fail them cuts away at our foundations. It should be easy to make a friend, it should be natural to find something to protect."

The bundle shudders, whispers, "It's not easy. Not for me."

"Your companions were all people who forced their way into your life. You never learned to seek them out."

Toushiro unfurls enough to stare his leader in the eye. He is shaking uncontrollably. "There's no one I can keep. I can't protect the helpless ones. I'm not needed by the strong ones. The middling ones despise me. And I don't trust you."

"I am aware," replies Yamamoto Genryuusai heavily. "But I have had fifty times longer than you to be tricked by the wheels of fate. And Ryuujin Jakka deals only in absolutes, thus I must be unyielding."

"Ha. It's easier to survive ice than flames. We would all be annihilated if your zanpakuto ever lost its faith in you." He gasps, every breath rasping his throat raw. The patriarch rumbles in dissent. The boy is naïve to think his partner's influence is so shallow.

"Hyourinmaru tests all he surveys for worthiness. You gained your captaincy in midsummer, yet that night an ice spirit roamed the streets like winter itself returning whilst you slept. This ice within you is simply another trial."

The infant's eyelids flicker shut, the temperature falls ever further.

"Did you even lose the desire to protect yourself?" muses Genryuusai, pressing his thumb against the frigid child's forehead with grandfatherly care. A flame burns there briefly. The rosy glow is almost too alive against the pallid skin.

"What manner of genius is that?"

**o)0(o**

A feather of heat rested upon his forehead, a phoenix down laid there by an ancient god.

He was barely conscious of it, of anything but sleep and numbness and the leaden weight of his eyelids.

The sensation flickered and expanded, melting the frost that pinched his skin and soothing the harsh rattle of his lungs. Tendrils of fire crawled through his body thawing the ice that gripped it.

He had never liked the warmth of summer before but now he relished, embraced it, delirious to the season or any other heat source but the sun. Unaware of the venerable Soutaicho scooping him up in worn old arms and personally conveying his smallest taicho back to the boy's offices.

"Must I teach these infants how to beat their hearts as well?" he asked the air with little desire for an answer. Perhaps the answer would be 'yes', he simply did not know. Youth was not a thing he had ever been cursed with.

He reached his destination and entered the darkened room, laying the child upon the padded bench where a blanket was already waiting.

"Hey, jii-san," chirped a voice at his elbow. "What's wrong with Toushiro? Is he okay?"

Yamamoto looked down and saw black hair, beneath that white-clothed shoulders, and beyond that the onlooker was hidden behind his bulky shihakusho; but he didn't need to see Aizen's mark to identify a former Espada. A wrinkled hand caught her chin and tilted her head to one side. She did not resist, a sudden premonition of a snapped neck loud in her mind. His touch made her short of breath, a side-effect of the dense reiatsu he hid from sight.

The old man studied her bright crimson collar through hooded eyes. A brush of his finger against it and the girl crumbled to her knees, back hunching under the spiritual pressure she couldn't quite sense. He had trusted Hitsugaya to deal with this situation sans interference; thus it was his first encounter with the younger Kurosaki.

Genryuusai had wished to demonstrate his trust in his remaining officers, and the boy had indeed handled the emergency with excellent strategy and little hesitation. So why was it the little captain had said to his face that there was no loyalty between them? Only duty?

It was saddening that Toushiro, whom even Shunsui had said might outshine them all in time, was breaking under the pressure already. Did he not realise that there would always be more strife to come? With a mere forty years of existence, and so desperate to be seen as an adult that he allowed himself no slack or room for mistakes…

How could such potential be so fragile?

Examination completed, Yamamoto released the girl from his spiritual grip. She gasped for air, squalling softly like a baby born too soon. In his shadow what more could she aspire to be?

"Do you know who you are?" he interrogated her, as unnoticed beside them Toushiro's eyes glided open and adjusted to the poor light. "Espada Zero, Tenebra Shirojos? A ghoul of such atrocious power even that _traitor _was proud to acknowledge you? Making a mockery of that ryoka who achieved bankai in three days!"

She scrambled away from him in all-consuming panic, hiding beneath the bench and tugging uselessly at the red choker as if her past life could be erased with its removal. "No! No jiji, that wasn't me, I never did it! Please don't hurt me; - _if you don't leave me alone my brother will kill you!_" A hand grabbed for her face and she shrieked, shrinking away, until she realised that this hand was small, unblemished; Toushiro's fallen from the edge of the sofa. She clutched for it like a lifeline.

"Soutaicho-sama," murmured Hitsugaya quietly, still drifting in limbo between sleeping and waking, sickness and health. "What she was and who she is…are disconnected by her execution. Hyourinmaru himself…"

Older than the city itself, Yamamoto Genryuusai-Shigekunai was as immovable as its foundations. "And what did her fellow Espadas say, when they were battling Sado Yasutora?"

Karin yelped as the hand she held suddenly constricted her own to a painful degree. An ugly shudder crawled down Toushiro's spine, snapping him to full awareness. The Soutaicho nodded gravely. Having witnessed the boy's understanding, he left the room.

Words from the mouth of a Vasto Lorde that had attained an unfathomable level of strength. One that Karin had ranked above, only a brief snatch of time before now.

…_A soul who goes that far into darkness… is__** stained forever**__._

**o)0(o**

The dragon hit the ground like an iceberg dropped from heaven. The paving shuddered and crumbled, frozen clods of mud and dust raining down upon the impact site in a shrapnel grenade. Its slick body gleamed, white reiatsu snow settling all around its serpentine length.

Karin's eyes rolled back as she very nearly fainted from shock. Toushiro's small hands caught her waist as her legs turned to jelly, and he tutted at her as if she was meant to be used to this by now. _Well excuse_ _**me**_, thought the girl furiously once the world stopped spinning. _I don't get pounced on by giant dragons every day!_

"Hyourinmaru," said Hitsugaya in a curious voice – half ceremony and half apprehensive hope. The drake turned its head to him regally, swanlike neck arching.

"Oh you know him?" squeaked Karin, regaining her balance. "Nice one! Couldn't you ask him to warn us before he does that?" Sarcasm was written all over her face. He raised his eyebrows at her.

"_Anyone_ could tell he was - oh, of course. No spiritual awareness."

"Yeah, it's lovely," she replied. "Sensing ghosts and monsters always gave me a headache, right, so fine by me if I can't." She folded her arms. They refused to let her change out of the Espada uniform, and the frigid air was making her bare stomach cold.

_So you chose this one._ The sheer voice seemed to exude from thin air, with no movement of its jaws. _Why? She is too brittle. Even the breath of an arrancar would snap her. Do not set yourself up for more loss just because she is so easy to pity._

Karin shivered. "What's going on?"

The captain snorted. The dragon shook its wings out lazily, ice rippling like silk in denial of physics. Their eyes met; emeralds and rubies, communicating without words. Toushiro reached up and rested a hand against the creature's hoarfrost skin. He seemed to stand taller beside it, as if gaining a poise that befitted his real age.

"I thought you wanted to see my zanpakuto?"

Her eyes widened.

"Zanpakutos are _swords!_"

"The sword is only a lesser form they take on for our benefit. You should know, you had one."

He didn't see her flinch at those words, nor the look of nausea that crawled across her face. He was preoccupied with Hyourinmaru's mocking laughter. Beautiful Hyourinmaru. Did it matter if Karin was so brittle? Toushiro was starting to realise he would fight on anyone's behalf so long as his zanpakuto, his soulmate and comrade-in-arms, stayed with him.

_She never had a zanpakuto!_ scorned the dragon. _Hollows and Wholes cannot reside in the same space, how can a thing be empty and full at the same time? How can an arrancar wield a true zanpakuto, when a zanpakuto resides in the heart they threw away? An arrancar has only the sham of a zanpakuto. There was no one of my kind in there when I cut the evil out of her soul. You know nothing of what she was, Toushiro._

He rankled at this, and immediately argued. "The vaizards, then? How do you explain them? That mask Ichigo wears isn't just for show. The entire problem with Aizen is that he breaks the rules! Even if they're taboo you can't simply deny that people with both natures exist. The vaizards were exiled, not eliminated."

The legendary creature snapped at him, sharp icicles rushing towards his head. The boy skipped out of the way, throwing his arms wide for balance. He was hardly surprised though. Hyourinmaru was no less proud than his wielder. Both disliked being contradicted.

_Ichigo has only the sham of a Hollow, a shadow in his mind, not a possessing demon but an insanity all his own._ _Would you keep a madman in your home? He may appear to be a dichotomy, but as long as he holds a zanpakuto in his hand he is not a Hollow. It is impossible._ Their debate continued more quietly, as a crowd of awe-filled shinigami had gathered to behold the incredible sight. That prodigy, Hitsugaya! Materialising his zanpakuto for so long, and speaking to it so freely! Those lower down the ranks barely believed it. Assuming it was a morale boost, to show just what could be achieved, they did not really listen to the words themselves. Fortunately for Karin and Ichigo.

_Trust me. He has no duality. He only tricks his body into believing itself broken. It is not a Hollow that makes him dangerous, it is a split personality. I have been there, you have been there. When Sojiro was in Hueco Mundo I could never find him. We were only reunited by the King's Seal, when he restored himself with it. Believe in me Toushiro. I never lie. Do not throw me away for the sake of an argument, about a zanpakuto you never saw with your own eyes._

"I…" Toushiro hesitated, and finally caved in. "You would know more about it than I do. I can only learn about zanpakuto from you."

_I hope that was not your reason for offering that girl as my tribute._

"No," he said absentmindedly, looking around for her, his head whirling with new information. "Not only that, there were more…"

...

… He froze.

"Where is she?"

**o)0(o**

_**Shinigami Cup: Golden!**_

**o)0(o**

**(deleted scene)**

_Toushiro: Hyou, this is Karin, my new shawty.__ Hyourinmaru: You chattin' shit ma boy? Noway! Sup Kaz?  
_  
Hyourinmaru yawned carelessly. _So you chose this one. She certainly looks helpless._

Karin would usually argue that she wasn't a delicate snowflake, but next to a massive magical beast of legend she felt _exactly_ like a delicate snowflake. Indeed, she used to kill Hollows with a blunt football, but even that drop of reiatsu was gone. Added to the fact that she now resided in the afterlife in the middle of a war with only half an idea of what was going on, and –

"I'm not _that_ helpless."

They both blinked at her. How clueless was she?

"So…" She gazed up at the dragon and tried very hard not to run and hide. "Does it eat female sacrifices?"

"You're not a sacrifice," Toushiro corrected her. "You're tribute."

"There's a difference?"

"The second one doesn't have to be dead."

"I am dead."

"…Don't split hairs."

**o)0(o  
**

Karin: So you've had hypothermia then been set on fire to warm you up. You know if you were a living human you'd be suffering from heat stroke and burns and chilblains and pins and needles and the shakes right now.  
Toushiro: Thankfully I'm dead. …OW OW OW!  
Karin: That'll be the psychosomatic pain setting in... D  
Toushiro: This isn't meant to affect me!  
Karin: Maybe you're not suitable for refreezing?

**o)0(o**

**~For All My Awesome Readers~**

http :/ /www .youtube. com/ watch?v=6WG85LEvvUU

**This is a Bleach AMV to Kanye West's Power that took me 3 or 4 days to make. It's pretty badass. Go watch it! =D**

**o)0(o**

Everyone, thank you for sticking with HB! And Sweece, who recommended HB on TVTropes – I had literally just said 'Imagine if someone recc'd me... *dreamy eyes*' and _there it was!_ That made my day! HB will definitely be finished this summer. Just keep nagging me. : )

_Alliriyan~*_


	36. Crouching Dragon, Hidden Shadows

**Hell Butterfly**

**Crouching Dragon, Hidden Shadows**

**~36~**

**o)0(o**

Karin laughed innocently when he caught up to her. "Haha, I just got bored! Was ickle Shiro-chwan scared of the big mean dwagon?"

His face twitched at that, as she effortlessly pushed every single rage button he had. Teeth grinding together, biting back a whole lungful of insults that were far too rude for her age to be exposed to; he tried not to explode.

"I mean you didn't actually need me for anything right? You were just showing off your dragon. He's really super cool! I mean, way too cool, I was freezing." Big, grey, naïve eyes. They hid a mastermind of evil taunting.

"What did you think you were there for? I was introducing you to Hyourinmaru! You should be honoured, no one else has met him directly," grumbled the boy.

She concentrated on kicking stray pebbles as far as she could, white sandals scuffing along the pavement. "Well I don't know what's normal or special round here, do I? Oh, you two stood there chatting in front of everyone about what happened to me and whether Ichi-nii is a psycho and if I have a, a zanpakuto as if it can come back whenever it feels like it. I'm not interested in that stuff. I never even liked seeing ghosts." A stone went skittering away up the street, hit a wall and rebounded round the corner. She took up a small victory pose. A family containing an absent mother, a lunatic medic father, a mysterious idiot brother and a mini-chef sister all had curdled to make the last Kurosaki weirdly tenacious. Hitsugaya just couldn't fathom _how_.

"But then," she continued, still light and breezy; "then you said it wasn't a zanpakuto or a Hollow, and it came from me! Like I-"

She couldn't even spit the words out. _As if I killed my brother myself?_ She coped by ignoring the entire issue, because surely it was her choice what mood she should be in. But they kept bringing it up, the old guy and then Toushiro and probably all of them suspicious of her behind her back…

How was she meant to keep calm if they wouldn't let her forget it ever happened? Outwardly she shrugged. "I wasn't interested in your conversation anymore so I left."

The taicho pulled a strange face, was she angry? Then why not just say so? Though for someone who appeared to be so unaffected by her trials, this was a little bit odd. "There's a war brewing, Karin, we can't walk on eggshells round your feelings. I'm sorry but there's no age limit on who bad things can happen to, and what was done to you is a major issue for everyone. We have to discuss it and be prepared for if it happens again!"

He had cut straight to the chase. Damn him for being an observant genius! Her smile was cracking, so she looked in the opposite direction and continued walking two steps ahead of him. "Sure, good for you, but do I have to listen to it?" muttered the prisoner obstinately. "In fact maybe I'm a spy and you should keep me far, far away from all your prep-whatever."

"Funnily enough, Aizen used to be one of our captains and already knows all our procedures; he probably helped write some of them. All he has left to discover is how much we don't know about arrancars. We only know that Espada Zero had swords and called them Naraku." Toushiro sighed. "Although Inoue saw everything that happened to you, she didn't know what it all meant. Don't make assumptions about our guesswork." He tilted his head. "We'd have better luck asking you what you remember about it all."

"It's over. It doesn't matter anymore."

He laughed, a short sarcastic bark. "Ha! I'm afraid it does. If Aizen manages to harness a dangerous power like Naraku's, to cut through anything without resistance…"

"Like what?" she asked blankly, turning round.

"It uses an interdimensional rift to-"

"I don't care about that, I couldn't hear you."

"Eh…Naraku?" She saw his lips moving, but all that emerged was static. She couldn't even figure out how he produced a weird noise like that. Putting on her 'Isshin-is-being-an-idiot-again' expression, the girl stood arms akimbo and raised her eyebrows.

"Hey. If you want to scare me, it's a stupid joke. Speak properly."

Karin had begun to shake from the moment he said the word, and Toushiro finally realised it was not from anger but from fear. He leaned forward and shouted the name in her ear; she winced and batted him away. "Words, Toushiro! Use your words! Not sound effects! Jeez, did my dad corrupt you when he lived here or something?"

The taicho huffed, crouching down and scribbling the kanji into the dusty ground.

"That means hell," mumbled Karin, folding her arms in annoyance. "That's really nice of you, Toushiro. Wow. I thought you said you were grown up."

He groaned, pressing his head into his hands. "Don't blame me for your complications. I think Hyourinmaru may have been wrong. He's going to be pissed."

"Oh, an angry dragon. I feel so safe."

Privately Hitsugaya noted that Karin had been much, much scarier than Hyourinmaru ever was when he'd met her in kill-mode. "The bottom line is, until this war is over, we're not going to see you as anything other than a ticking time-bomb. Management apologises for the inconvenience." This was said with a wry twist of his mouth.

Karin almost smirked in reply, but backed away instead. "Nuh-uh. A _Hollow_, one that is now _dead_, because of _you_, was a time-bomb. I'm just the crazy ryoka's little sister, and the crazy ex-captain's daughter, I am _not_ some kind of super-warrior like my brother. Anyway he has issues. I don't. I refuse to have issues. It makes Yuzu upset. So what you're on about is impossible."

"Exactly – it's impossible, but the problem is, everything about your family is impossible. And if it _is_ a zanpakuto then it's maybe not what you think, it's entirely possible Naraku – uh," She could only hear a fizzing sound, so he settled for a similar word; "it's possible Jigoku was only acting for your protection."

"That's what you call protection?"

"Well-"

"_He was in ribbons, Toushiro!"_

"But you weren't."

"If that's what protection is I don't want _anyone_ to guard me! I hate it when people get hurt!"

The white-haired boy fell still. He glanced down at his white haori. He avoided her terror-white face. Even a powerless child didn't want him as a guardian. His mouth pressed into a thin line for an instant.

"I think we're done here then."

"_Fi_nally. I didn't even want to talk about this, why d'you think I left?" She flung her arms in the air, oblivious to his discomfort. "By the way, do you know when Ichigo is coming here next?"

"Later today," he said distantly, already thinking about who or what else to use as bait for Hyourinmaru.

"Oh, great," cheered Karin, suddenly full of sunshine. "It's stupid but I miss him more now that I'm the one in Soul Society and he's the one at home." The word home was said with complete and utter longing.

Sometimes he thought she was relying on nothing but bravado.

**o)0(o**

"I guess it makes sense," Tatsuki hummed, poking Baigon with a curious fingertip. For some reason Orihime would always let the fairies loose when visiting the Arisawas, and would feed them tidbits and sweets like so many dolls at a tea party. Actually, from the way they guzzled it down, the Shun Shun Rikka probably couldn't stomach their owner's cooking either. The karate champion wondered whether they had to be fed everyday like pets.

"Karakura hasn't been particularly kind to you has it?" Tatsuki began to count the misfortunes off on her fingers, loving friend that she was. "Let's see, got picked on and cut all your hair off, Sora's death, kidnap, getting dragged into a war between the factions of the undead because you have a crush on a guy who is now a zombie, so far as I can tell; you've been to the afterlife, been in fights, been in prison, had to impersonate a grim reaper, had to kill monsters, done some kind of Frankenstein necromancy, and now your unrequited strawberry is going schizo and attacking you. Did I miss much?"

"No, Tatsuki-chan!" gasped Inoue, sparkling with awe. "Your memory is amazing! Do you train it every day with a hundred imaginary kicks and punches? Per side of the brain?"

"Of course," replied Tatsuki, sniggering into her cup of green tea. "That's exactly what I do. And twenty imaginary suplexes."

"Ahh, I thought so! In fact I've been getting better at karate too. Actually, Isshin-san is like this amazing alarm clock, he attacks everyone every morning when we're asleep and it's really great for the reflexes." She pumped her fist in the air. "And he shouts 'GOOD MORRRRNING!' so it's like English practice too. He's very clever." She blew on her hot drink happily. "I really love living there. It's nice to see people in the morning and share a room with Yuzu. She's been teaching me to cook."

_Cough_- "Um, really?" Tatsuki sweatdropped. "How's that going?"

Orihime pouted. "I tried to make a western pudding called trifle and it turned into fruit soup. It was meant to be really easy too. I still ate it though, fruit soup is nice."

"I'm sure it is," muttered her friend darkly.

"Anyway I've phoned my uncle and I think I'll be going to see him tomorrow." The smile fell from her face. "I told him it was a short term visit, just to try my options." She glanced at Tatsuki with damp eyes. "You will come see me sometimes, right?"

"Of course! Hey, don't start crying on me, you know I don't like it. You've been telling me all day this is the only thing to do." She shuffled round the low table and hugged her best friend tightly.

"I know," hiccupped Orihime, scrubbing at her eyes. "But really, Karakura let me know Sora was safe and let me meet you and I love it here even if it's crawling with Hollows – and – and…" She buried her face in Tatsuki's shoulder, a high-pitched keen escaping her throat. "_I don't want to leave…_"

The dark-haired girl slumped in defeat. "Just now you were saying Ichigo would kill you if you stayed. Make your mind up." It made her head spin to try and figure out Ichigo and his alter-ego or whatever Orihime-chan had been babbling about. Suffice to say Ichigo was definitely no longer the kid she had known so well.

"I set him off somehow," explained Inoue after a long snivel into a tissue, sitting up straight and rearranging her long auburn hair with her hands. "The Hollow only seems to break out when I'm around. It thinks I'm someone it used to know. If I go, he'll probably calm down and be alright. I don't like putting him in that situation when he's done so much for me – it's not fair on him, he's terrified."

"Well if I ever meet it I'll kick its face in. Though Ichigo being terrified of anything sounds kinda weird. He's not exactly a cry-baby anymore."

She ate a donut miserably. "He's paranoid, Tatsuki-chan. He barely even looks at me. If you ever meet it, you have to run away as fast as you can. _Swear_."

"I swear, I swear!"

"_On your soul!_"

"I said I swear already!"

"Good," nodded Inoue, her work here was done. "Or else Charlie the Unicorn will be angry at you."

Tatsuki facepalmed. "I should never have introduced you to the internet."

**o)0(o**

Karin snuck up to Hitsugaya's office and listened in from behind the doorframe. There was notice up about being in a private meeting; she pretended she hadn't seen it. She wanted to ask him why her brother was taking so long to arrive, and maybe steal his soul phone to make the guy hurry up a bit. It turned out she needn't bother.

"Oyaji told me to tell you, if you don't look after her to your very last breath he'll spread embarrassing pictures of you all over Karakura and Rukongai and Seireitei. Oi, don't glare at me; I'm only passing the message on because I think he's stupid enough to do it. …Maa, I don't know where he got them from, he was your captain. What have you done that's so embarrassing anyway?"

She could almost hear Ichigo roll his eyes. Toushiro spluttered and changed the subject. Now she felt a burning curiosity to see those photos.

"She doesn't seem very keen on being looked after by anyone," replied the albino, rather more snarky than necessary.

Ichigo sounded like he had a wicked grin plastered across his face. "That's why you completely ignore all of the rescuee's opinions. Works for me."

"You haven't explained why you're leaving without seeing Karin; she's been waiting for you all day." Hitsugaya contrived to sound like this was merely inconvenient for him and not that he actually cared. In the corridor, Karin tried to restrain herself from marching straight in and kicking Ichi-nii in the shins.

Toushiro watched the former ryoka dither and try to avoid the question, scratching his orange head in distraction. "It's…uhhh…"

"Your reiatsu is more unstable than usual," said the captain pointedly. "Care to explain that too?"

"Everything is more unstable," muttered Ichigo unhappily. "The Hollow is trying to get out."

Hitsugaya fidgeted with a writing brush on his desk, remembering Hyourinmaru's words. "That or it's just you going insane." The Kurosaki shot him a withering glare.

"Don't pretend you know anything about it, Toushiro," he snapped, temper fraying. "The vaizards were kicked out the moment they existed – as if a shinigami would understand! I didn't understand it when it _happened_ to me!"

"It's Hitsugaya-taicho," corrected the boy, for lack of a better argument. _And again Hyourinmaru seems to be wrong. Why was he so adamant?_

Getting Ichigo to admit what was wrong with him was like pulling teeth. "I'll bring her here now shall I?" suggested Toushiro, sounding like a teacher calling his student's bluff. The teenager winced.

"That would be…a bad idea. The Hollow has attacked Inoue twice already, and if they target family first it'll definitely go after Karin. It's got to have a grudge against her." He looked more than a little haunted by his own words.

"_What?_" yelled the taicho. "You already lost control of it? Why the hell didn't you tell us?"

"I thought Rukia had," hedged the vaizard. _Clearly not._

Hitsugaya stood up, drawing his sword. _And this was probably why she hadn't. _He would just have to hope that either Hyourinmaru would return to his aid or Ichigo would take the hint. "I'm detaining you immediately."

A pregnant silence filled the room. The younger of the two seemed terribly old and jaded when he spoke next.

"If I even thought you could, Toushiro, I would let you."

"Then I hereby place you under arrest, Substitute Kurosaki Ichigo."

The shinigami closed his eyes, and when they opened they were speckled with gold, bloodshot black. "_But you can't._"

The thin wall exploded, Karin hit the ground in a shower of splinters. It knocked the wind out of her, more than the impact, there was an unbearable pressure in the air as though gravity had been turned up six notches. Ichigo leapt out over her head, and caught sight of her curled up on the floor. He paused, took one step towards her, his hand rising and looking oddly sharp.

His eyes reminded her of Hueco Mundo. She shrank back. The vaizard stopped once more; turned away with great difficulty - she could see his muscles straining - and fled down the hallway in the direction of the senkai gates.

"Ichi-nii!" she shouted after him, breath hitching in her throat. "Ichi-nii…? Don't leave me here on my own!"

**o)0(o**

Hitsugaya dragged the girl out to meet Hyourinmaru once again, a tight grip on her wrist to prevent a second escape. "_No_," he chided her when she squirmed and dug her heels into the ground. "You're both going to stop acting stupid and do as I say. Hyourinmaru!"

At its master's voice, the dragon once more descended from the churning skies; though this time more like a snowflake than a thoughtlessly tossed iceberg. _Again?_ The zanpakuto sighed, creating a chilly wind. _Was she not both beyond her usefulness and too fragile to survive our aid?_

"Don't be so childish," snapped Toushiro, and the dragon balked a little in surprise. "If you weren't being so immature about the fact I was going through a hard time and didn't know what to do, then you would have been there when the Hollow broke out and I could have stopped him! He's the biggest wildcard Seireitei has ever seen, and now he's running loose in Karakura!"

Hyourinmaru couldn't decide whether this scolding was amusing or shaming. The both of them were tiny children, ants beside his great stature, and yet here the boy was, daring to tell a proud heavenly being it was behaving like an idiot. The icy maw cracked open, the dragon bared its fangs, bringing its head down to their level. He was delighted.

_This_ was why he had chosen Hitsugaya as a partner in the beginning. The man had so much fire compressed behind his stern exterior; capable of completely forgetting his size and station in the face of overwhelming anger. He never humbled himself to anyone, in any lifetime.

_My apologies,_ growled Hyourinmaru, hiding his glee. _Did you even attempt to call me?_

"That's irrelevant now, the damage is done. _This_," he pushed Karin forward, who tried to scramble back when a gleaming red eye filled her vision; "is your tribute."

"I'm what now? Oi! Don't just decide these things on your own!" She glared fiercely at the colossal beast. "Don't you dare try and eat me."

_I do not require food,_ it snorted. _But do not meddle in my affairs, for you are small and crunchy and might taste good with ketchup._

She blinked, and tried not to laugh.

"Don't fight," Hitsugaya warned them. "Karin, you probably heard about this when you were reading my papers without permission. Since becoming a shinigami I have slowly lost everyone important to me, and when Matsumoto died in Hueco Mundo it was the last straw. But this dragon here is known as the Heavenly Guardian: he's a legendary zanpakuto that returns to Soul Society every few hundred years. He is the most powerful of the ice-type swords and can control the entire sky at will. But if there's nothing for the Guardian to protect, he's nothing more than a dragon without treasure. We can't fight to the fullest."

The Kurosaki girl digested this flood of information. "You mean…like Ichi-nii?"

"Huh?" What did Ichigo have to do with this? Did she have a brother complex?

"The 'go' in his name stands for guardian." She glanced between the boy and the drake. "So you're saying your zanpakuto feels the way Ichi-nii would if all his friends and family were taken away and he had no one to fight for."

Toushiro stiffened. His green eyes slid away, staring at something from the past. "Um…yes…that's…that's how we feel." It sounded unbearable put like that, so blunt.

"That's so sad!" wailed Karin without warning; "You poor thing!" She hugged him so fast he nearly fell over. "Aw-aww, don't worry about it, I'll be your new best friend. You didn't have to make this so stuffy, you should've just said! It's not like I have anyone here either…"

"It's really not necessary, please get off me," stammered the soul reaper, pushing her off feebly. "This was all for Hyourinmaru's sake, you don't even need to agree with it, it's a confirmation between my zanpakuto and I only-"

"Shut up," ordered Karin cheerily. She turned to the dragon, hesitated, and settled for patting its muzzle. "Hi, Hyourinmaru. Nice to meet you. Sorry I ran off before."

_I haven't agreed to this yet,_ the zanpakuto reminded her, wrinkling its nose. _I don't believe you would survive a rescue from me without reiatsu to shield you._

"Then maybe you shouldn't throw any reiatsu at me? I mean you're a guardian right, or are you only guarding the sky because you can't accidentally break it?"

"Enough!" choked Toushiro, slapping a hand over her mouth and pulling her away from the living weapon. "Hyourinmaru, please consider it. She was Aizen's strongest soldier and he clearly doesn't believe she's worthless yet; he sent his Primera Espada to retrieve her. Her brother helped us when the Gotei 13 was against us before, with Sojiro. Kurosaki-taicho asked us to take care of his daughter for him, and…

"And although Matsumoto may have died with Ichimaru, the last thing she did in this world was lead Karin out of Hueco Mundo."

They stared deep into each other's eyes, the boy and the dragon, latter curling a vast white tail around its companion in sympathy. "Make that your hoard of gold," whispered Toushiro in his mind so that only Hyourinmaru would hear. "Do it for Rangiku's memory. This girl isn't going to have a nervous breakdown like Momo, she's too young to fall in love with the enemy and has no power to betray us, and she's already returned from the Espada unscathed because of _your_ intervention. She's Isshin and Masaki's kid. She may later be used to attack us from within, we don't know what Aizen is capable of. That's more than enough investment."

The glacial serpent remained silent.

"Please fight by my side again Hyourinmaru," he said aloud. "We are the Heavenly Guardian. I need you."

The dragon roared, bellowed with cold laughter, with the sound of cracking ice sheets. _I never left you, witless one. I only needed you to believe I was there. I only needed you to have a strong enough reason to seek me out with all your heart._

Toushiro couldn't hold back, he grinned, almost running forward to embrace the wall of ice that was his zanpakuto. If Karin wasn't there, he would have.

_And so, let us devise a new test for her. The hypothermia I gave you might kill her._

Hitsugaya looked tetchy, though his eyes were smiling. "Yes, hypothermia was an unfair retaliation when I only made you a little upset."

Hyourinmaru leant down and bit the back of Toushiro's white robe as delicately as possible. "What are you doing?" spluttered the taicho as he was lifted into the air. _Come, this shall be entertaining; we have never done it before. I certainly will not waste so much energy by materialising in your realm again, so enjoy it whilst you can._

Karin, busy laughing at them, was completely unprepared to dodge the dragon's teeth when it picked her up too. When she was placed upon its back, she shrieked, clinging to her new 'best friend'. Of course Hitsugaya was only slightly warmer and not much help. "This is _freezing_! Let me off, what are you doing?"

"I think we're going flying," mumbled Toushiro, a little horrified to learn Hyourinmaru had an inner child too.

_It is rescue practice,_ corrected the zanpakuto aloofly. _If she panics and falls off, or freezes to death now, we cannot be expected to protect her in the midst of battle. Also, if you make a mistake and this guardee dies, then you are out of options. Therefore it is only logical to train and be prepared._

"I'm convinced you only want to play," hissed Hitsugaya under his breath.

And then they were springing off the ground and launching into the air, a curious mixture of normal flight and weightless ascension, so different to the way using reiatsu to stay aloft felt. He could feel Hyourinmaru reacting to the curves of the wind and using gravity's pull to accelerate. Karin was screaming in his ear as if it was the best rollercoaster in the world, and he had to hold her down when she flung her arms in the air.

"You're meant to not fall off!" he shouted against the gusting wind.

She was laughing despite turning slightly blue from cold. "WOOOHOOO! I want a zanpakuto like this!"

"Trust me, that's taboo. You don't want this one. Besides, you already-"

"Don't wanna hear it~!" she whooped, as they rushed down another steep descent. "You don't know what it felt like, so forget it!"

The dragon levelled out, vast wings pounding the sky to slow down, and eventually the roaring gale faded. Now they could hear each other speak, she caught him saying something she wasn't meant to hear.

"I imagine it's like freezing to death,"

Twisting round to face him, Karin saw that in spite of his unhappy words he was exhilarated by the flight and this new side to Hyourinmaru. He was staring out at the sprawling city below them with wide eyes, fascinated. Always, the shinigamis only used their powers to get ahead in battle, never taking in the scenery like this. She didn't quite dare look down herself.

"Um," said the Kurosaki, breaking his reverie. "Freezing to death?"

"Wha-" He blinked, thrown. "Oh, it's how I died. Back in the real world. It's pretty much all I remember of my life before. But it happened for a reason."

"How could it?" she asked, shivering as it reminded her she was sitting on a giant flying ice cube in a thin atmosphere.

"This is something that happens to all shinigami, but they're not always aware of it." Hitsugaya fell into teacher-mode without second thought. It was part of being a captain: constantly explaining basic truths of zanpakutos to his troops, because only a dozen other people had attained such close bonds with theirs. "Hyourinmaru requires that his wielder knows what it feels like to be frozen to the core. Anyone who fights with him is guaranteed to have frozen to death when they were alive. Usually it's less obvious, like your brother. I heard that his Zangetsu doesn't allow him to retreat, which explains why he's so reckless, I suppose."

"What happened to you then?"

He seemed confused at the question. "Why do you ask? I lived in a mountain pass village; I don't think it was in your era. It was winter, but spring had come earlier than usual and the snowdrops were blooming, so I assumed it was safe to travel to the next village. Then the weather turned without warning and I froze to death in the blizzard. It's not that interesting. Let's just say I don't like snowdrops anymore," he finished with a bleak laugh.

_I am worth any torment,_ interjected Hyourinmaru. _It has been three decades since, do not complain._

"I'm not complaining."

The dragon shivered in reply, forcing them to cling on for dear afterlife.

"S-so…" mumbled Karin, teeth chattering from cold. "What _did_ it feel like?"

"Numb and hopeless and lonely," answered the boy abruptly, shrugging it off. His snow-white hair ruffled in the wind, and his green eyes were sharp, warning her not to push the issue further. She glanced down.

"Yeah, actually. Being Tenebra did feel like that…afterwards, when I woke up. At the time there was just nothing, I don't remember being aware of it."

He was surprised, this was the first time she'd admitted to being Tenebra Shirojos. Sadly she was still looking down; soon her eyes were spinning and she lurched sideways. "I feel dizzyyyyy…"

"Hey –hey!" He snatched her back from the void, grabbing the black belt of her Espada uniform. "Don't get vertigo _now_!"

"Eurghhh…"

"And don't you _dare_ throw up on my zanpakuto!"

_Don't throw up on my captain, either!_

**o)0(o**

_**Shinigami Cup: Golden!**_

**o)0(o  
**

Toushiro wasn't really watching Karin as he spoke, which is why he nearly fainted from sheer stupidity when he turned round.

"Hyourinmaru is the Heavenly Guardian, the most badass ice zanpakuto in the world; he could sink the Titanic, and – DID YOU LICK THE DRAGON?"

Karin panicked and tried to hide the fact that her tongue was fused to Hyourinmaru's nose with a casually placed hand. "…O? I yidn't? …elp?"

**o)0(o**

"I SWEAR CAPTAIN, THE ICEBERG WAS NOT THERE BEFORE!"  
Hyourinmaru looked round vacantly, wondering what in the vast empty ocean could have poked him in the tail so viciously.  
"ABANDON SHIIIIIP!"  
Toushiro groaned. "Hyou, you really can't guard for shit."

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	37. A Many Splendored Battlefield

**Hell Butterfly**

**A Many-Splendored Battlefield**

**~37~**

**o)0(o**

"Woah," said Tatsuki eloquently after opening her front door. "It's you. I didn't recognise your chi."

"It's called reiatsu," Ichigo corrected her. He looked stressed, the frown deeper than ever, heavy bags under his eyes from hours of worrying. "You don't look pleased to see me."

Tatsuki fidgeted with the door latch. Well, no. She'd recently been informed of his new talent for flying into psychotic rages and playing schizophrenic mind games. It wasn't the most encouraging. "Well, no," she scoffed aloud. "You claim to be my best friend but you never talk to me unless you want something."

"We haven't been best friends since I started winning spars and you got pissy about it," said Ichigo incredulously. "Chad, Rukia, hell even Ishida outranks you now."

"Finished that game I lent you yet?" she asked, nonchalantly ignoring him. She waved him indoors.

"I've been busy," yawned the guy, scratching his orange hair.

"I gave it to you _last year_!"

"I've been busy _all year_!" The substitute reaper growled in annoyance, not in the mood for small talk. "Look, I'm only here to find out where Inoue went."

"Why, are you her babysitter or something? No wait," glancing up in surprise; "you two finally got together!"

"No, don't be stupi...wait, what?"

"Nothing~!" trilled Tatsuki, elbowing a specific pressure point on his back. He sat down hard, landing beside the low table in the Arisawa living room. As he complained about his new bruise, his black-belt friend simply shrugged and laughed at him.

"So," she began, passing him a snack. "What's with the stalking?"

Ichigo tried not to appear guilty and evasive, failing miserably. "What? She gets kidnapped and stuff. If I don't know she's safe then anything could be..."

"Aaawww," mocked Tatsuki, but internally frowning. Was he actually saying 'if I don't know where she is, I might have blacked out and hurt her without realising'? She'd seen more than enough split-personality films to believe it.

"You look like death warmed up," she noted tactfully.

He rolled his eyes. "Cheers." They made further light conversation for as long as she could spin it out, until at length he snapped. "I _know_ she was here last!"

Tatsuki coughed, glancing at her watch. How long had she stalled him for? "Yeah, actually... I dropped her off at the station over two hours ago. She's long gone."

There was a moment of silence and she tensed, ready for a bad reaction. Then Ichigo seemed to deflate with relief, shoulders sagging. "Good. I didn't know what to do and it's not safe for her round here anymore. I'm not," he struggled to spit the words out; "strong enough to..."

"Huh," she said in delayed surprise. "I didn't expect you to be happy about it."

"Are you kidding?" exploded the vaizard; "I've nearly killed her three times already! It's a miracle she survived long enough to run away! Hell, Tatsuki, she found Aizen and the entirety of Hueco Mundo less scary than me! I'm fucking cursed. Every single thing I do to try and get stronger just ends up damaging more people." He fell still, staring at the familiar carpet and decorations in memory of easier days. One hand drifted up to hide his face. "I actually came here to ask you for advice, I just couldn't think how to say it. You know her best, right? She doesn't make sense to anyone else."

"Orihime's not meant to make sense to anyone," murmured Tatsuki. Ichigo looked tormented. It left her feeling uneasy: she hadn't known how to help him when Masaki died, and years later still wasn't sure what to do. "But she can come back once you win the war, right?"

"...Even _if_ the war ends, it won't magically make me normal again;" he corrected her; sombre, _grim_. "But maybe we'll be lucky and Aizen will kill me."

She hissed. "Don't spout crap like that. Just find a way to kill the damn Hollow."

He didn't respond. The atmosphere seemed to warp; a shiver crawling down her spine.

Yellow eyes flashed at her and she leapt backwards into a combat stance out of pure reflex. "Hey! What are you doing?"

Ichigo's fist punctured her table with a loud _CRACK_! "_Tell me where the queenie is hiding!_" roared the Hollow in its nightmarish voice. It leered at her hungrily, all the more disturbing for doing so with Ichigo's face; unnatural eyes shining. "_Or I'll eat you, Tat-chan,_" it gloated, using an old, old nickname to unnerve her further.

"Tokyo!" shrieked Tatsuki before she could stop herself, her skin was tingling and her body heavy as his reiatsu invaded the room. "She went towards Tokyo! Don't come near me!"

Kurosaki Ichigo cackled at her, his frown gone but his smile jeering. "_Amazing, Tat-chan, you're nothing but a weakling after all. I'll let you live till I get back to show my gratitude, naa?_" The possessing demon turned to leave, mocking her with a friendly little wave goodbye.

She stepped up onto the ruined table and roundhouse-kicked him in the back of the head, letting rip a fierce shout. Her foot connected with a solid thud. He toppled like a stone, completely poleaxed.

"Eat that!" whooshed Tatsuki, hopping back and forth like a hyped-up boxer, and not dropping her guard in case he got up again Terminator-style. "If you wanna chase my _real_ best friend out of town, don't you _dare_ pick a fight with me afterwards!"

She prodded him with a foot to no response. It seemed safe. After a moment's thought she dragged him, huffing and cursing, out of the flat and to the apartment block's elevator. "Did you...forget you were in... your stupidly heavy...real body?" she asked his prone form, out of breath. "...Idiot. If you're a danger to someone, don't keep following them around!" She hit the down button and waited, praying none of her neighbours would pass by. "I'm sorry, Ichigo, but your evil inner whatsit is bat-shit insane." The doors pinged open and she heaved him inside. "Seriously, if I can let her do a runner, so should you. You don't even realise she fancies you, for god's sake!" Pressing the ground floor icon, she jumped over her unconscious friend and darted out of the lift before the doors slid shut.

There, now he was trapped in a giant steel box. That should slow him down some, right?

Dusting her hands off with satisfaction at a job well done, Tatsuki strolled back into her home and rang the Kurosaki Clinic.

"Yo, Isshin?"

"TATSUKI! MY THIRD DAUGHTER! It's been so long; why don't you visit your beloved Isshin-papa anymore?"

"Focus!" she prompted him, shaking her head wearily as he fake-sniffled down the phone. "Oi, I've got Ichigo out cold in the elevator of my building. Can you come get him ASAP? Break out the flashy lights and sirens. He went a bit...evil undead."

There was silence filled only by the fizz of the telephone.

"...Clearly we have more to fear from the Arisawas than from Aizen. Well done, Tatsuki-chan, I shall add your name to the 'Small Girls Who Have Defeated Hichigo' _Hall of Fame_. And... and…"

"Mm-hm?"

His voice cracked with emotion. "I'm so proud of you!"

**o)0(o**

Following a brief, refreshing interlude listening to some pleasant muzak; the Hollow finally managed to extricate itself from Ichigo's physical body. The clunky old lift juddered to a halt and the doors pinged open. "_Ground floor,_" announced a husky disembodied voice.

Shirosaki Hichigo prowled out of the elevator, leaving the body behind in an untidy heap. He had a train to catch.

And although Inoue's spirit thread was hard to follow, one of tens of thousands weaving a dense white tapestry at the station; the Shun Shun Rikka's unique golden streamers stood out like homing beacons.

_Sly Tatsuki_. The gilded threads were going in the exact opposite direction to Tokyo.

Hichigo leapt into the air above the correct set of tracks, and accelerated into a run that broke the speed barrier. The air boomed, and he gave chase.

**o)0(o**

Ichigo had regained himself for a moment, though the concept of king and horse had long ago been discarded. He and the Hollow now switched so often that they both might as well be kings wearing saddles, or horses wearing crowns. He had come to on a deserted pathway with no memory of his journey there. Perhaps Inoue had sensed his pursuit and lured the Hollow somewhere uninhabited. Perhaps she just hadn't been able to flee fast enough.

There were only metres between them now.

"Listen, Orihime, you…" _You have to run away!_

He looked really upset, and she hated herself for putting that expression on his face. For the hundredth time she reconsidered leaving. But before he could speak any further there was an inhuman creel and the crackle of appearing bone. Ichigo began to shake as the inner Hollow took over, its mask obscuring the face she loved; warping it into an idol of fear.

That moment of absolute stillness as Ichigo fought for control and lost…

The reiatsu poured out in thick black waves, denser and more polluted than ever before. The markings upon its flat white face had changed, evolved; now a wide crimson stripe slashed either side from crown to jaw. Two blades projected out and forwards from its head at temple height. The razor-edged horns of a devil.

The Hollow was no basilisk anymore. An outpouring of this magnitude was on the level of a Vasto Lorde. Inoue had learned to recognise that if nothing else during her sojourn in Las Noches.

She might once have compared her feelings for Ichigo as an ocean hovering over her head, waiting to crash down and engulf her the moment he reciprocated – but now she truly understood the horror of being trapped beneath a sea of turbulent emotions. The spiritual pressure that flared and cascaded from the Hollow was already filling the sky. All that kept her from drowning was the thinnest pane of buttercup light.

"Shiten Kesshun, I reject;" whispered the girl, checking her shield's strength. She took no step backwards, for she was already trapped in the eye of the storm. A hurricane of power howled all around. Those bright yellow eyes were pinning her down again. Inoue was still unable to face them fully.

"_You brought me back from the dead._" A strangled raven's caw. Hunting, and blaming.

Orihime squeezed her eyes shut tightly, covering her ears with her hands; yet that voice still drilled through.

"_Why won't you save me from isolation as well?_" The Hollow scratched its ice-white talons across her shield and it began to shatter, every shard that fell chiming sweetly against the ground. Clinging closer to its elusive prey.

"_The memories alone, they're not enough alone; it's burning me inside out. I'm the embodiment of his loss, and I hate it. But when I found out about these past lives, and knew things about the both of you that even you didn't, it made me more than just his shadow. It gave me a life of my own, almost. Have you any idea how badly I want to be more than despair?_

_I was born a side-effect, not even a real Hollow, with nothing – feeling like everything was stolen from me. I'm tired of starving and the torture of knowing every single thing I have ever lost and never had... I am so sick to death of being Ichigo._"

Can't you save me from isolation as well? Well, perhaps she could, mused Inoue distantly as the funnel of vicious black rage contracted, spinning tighter and faster and with every heartbeat reeling her into the apparition's reach. No one ever tried to give the Hollows what they wanted, did they? Well, she had, just that once. That first time, the echoes of which still resonated through her every subsequent action. Sora hadn't killed her, not on purpose. No, and she had offered the same love as before, once she realised how deeply her betrayal was cutting him – to tremble at a curse he had not asked for and disown him. Ah, murmured her mind, dancing away from the reality of her imminent death and into the past; no, she had lent him her heart and he had accepted it until his own returned. Support. That was all they asked for. Devouring their most loved ones first, in search of the care and healing they craved. Arrancars Anonymous, she told herself with surety, was the way forward. _Hello, my name is Ulquiorra Schiffer, and I am a recovering Hollow-oholic._

Her eyes glazed over in an effort to block out the mask leering at her. The term was tossed around so casually it became desensitised, but what horrible things masks were. Thin, expressionless shells: the lie of another life. The heart of a soul extracted and dissected, blanched to marble white and boiled to stone stiffness, like any sheet of muscle could be. And, still patterned with old broken veins that had not completely lost their colour, they were then moulded into strange designs and cauterised onto the faces of the spirits trapped in limbo. Stifling their voices, veiling their identities, burning out their eyes. Had Ichigo-kun ever noticed that Hollows had two sets of teeth when they screamed? The fangs of the mask and the jaws of the skull still trapped beneath it. She wondered if Hichigo would have two smiles.

She seemed a million miles away. She could barely be closer yet was ignoring him completely. Even though she had been warned.

It left a bitter charred taste in the Hollow's maw.

"_I thought you had empathy,_" it creaked, hating the human intensely, blaming her. "_The older you had empathy_." And why it wanted empathy was anyone's guess, it barely knew its own desires; the attempt to change its instincts had only warped what was already broken. She was only alive, it vowed to itself, until a different version of her could be dragged out, and the resulting death of the pointless little queenie would satisfy it at last. It would plug the gap in its chest with her absence. Fill a hole with a void. Victory over the girl, obliteration of the enemy.

"_Don't you care?_" it stabbed her with accusations; "_Don't you know how it feels to be nothing_?"

Empathy. She flickered awake as if her name had been called. Yes, that was all the members of the AA wanted, someone to listen, a shoulder to cry on. _Chew on_, she amended, spying his gleaming row of canines. _Oh what big teeth you have._

Her posture tightened slightly, she put her mature facade on, the one that was necessary once all her friends had gone home each night. Ignore the fiery black inferno backdrop, don't judge by appearances. _Be brave. This is Ichigo. Try your best, for him._

For a fractured second their pupils locked together. The danger she was in finally hammered home, and her body automatically tried to run; spinning, stalling. There was no way out. Murder was the natural reaction to any action she performed in the territory of Shirosaki Hichigo. He had clawed her barriers to dust and left her trembling and defenceless in the tiny ring of safety. The violent tempest billowed on all sides. It would rip her apart if she even brushed against it.

…But it did not touch her.

Orihime felt a trace of curiosity.

She inched closer, still averting her eyes, and the circumference of the tornado tightened as she drew hesitantly nearer to its source. She told herself there was nowhere else to go now.

If touching him tore her hands apart, she could probably heal that.

If he killed her, perhaps she could go to Soul Society and learn to be better.

But if he embraced her, she had no idea what to do.

"_I am Ichigo and this is all I am. Reject me, I dare you, I'll feed upon my own despair. Make me powerful._"

It was laughing madly.

"_Reject me!_"

**o)0(o**

She had made it. Pinned right against the demon's chest, so close to human shape. Its cool salt-coloured skin rattled her with every psychotic cackle; the blunt edge of a gaping Hollow wound scuffing her cheek and a wild ginger mane whipped around them both in the gale, tangling with her own.

Shirosaki was pure sinew and thin, long limbs. His wrists bound by flaming red tassels, shoulders striped with bloody war paint. The mask swallowed his entire head in a helmet, wickedly sharp and curved scythe blades jutting out like bull horns. When he tipped his neck down to view the captive she was almost gored upon them.

It no longer spoke. Only cradled her delicate skull in those needle claws, forcing their eyes, the windows of the soul, to meet and –

The glass in those windows shattered, the desolation poured out, swamping her in toxic emotions and drowning her in unbearable pain, Orihime flinched away and by reflex –

_what is faster and harder to resist than a reflex?-_

- its fingers twitched and punctured her head as easily as soft butter. One straight through her cheek. Another cracking her spine. Talons slicing into her brain.

Her grey eyes rolled backwards, mouth hung slack, body convulsing oh-so-very humanly.

The Hollow flicked its hand distastefully, the carrion slid off. It looked at the crimson smearing its palm and hissed. _Staggering power, and as always for a Hollow, for Ichigo: no control at all._

Slowly it crouched by the corpse, rocking on its heels ever so slightly like Ichigo guarding the riverbank of his past nightmares. Shadow emotions swelled from all the memories it had eaten: vague concepts of guilt, sorrow, regret.

An eerie keening noise shivered in the air.

It waited,

…but she never returned.

**o)0(o**

Ichigo awoke in a thin pool of blood with Orihime's eyes staring blankly past him.

He accepted the situation with preternatural ease, as if he had always expected to end up here again, or had never left. The ground around them was scarred in strange patterns. He felt like he'd been laid face down on an anvil and pummelled into submission by some ungodly blacksmith, which was close enough to the truth.

He stayed there, saw no pointing in moving when he was already soaked, knew from past experience that the blood would not come off no matter what he did, that the dead body would not revive no matter how frantically he shook it, and – how long had it taken to learn this? – that the ghost would not appear no matter how long he waited.

Hichigo had devoured her. What else would a Hollow do? Cannibalising the kindest person he knew… _Murderer, murderer, murderer._

Slowly his eyes ceased to see what was around him. He sought refuge in his internal world, where no matter how bad the weather became, he would not have to look at the second woman he had murdered.

**o)0(o**

"_Go on, get out there! It's your body! It's all yours your majesty!_"

"No! No! This is your problem, you can fucking deal with it, I abdicate! I'm not going out there!"

"_Do it,_" taunted the Hollow, but the rain streamed down its chalk face like tears. "_I wanna see you break!_"

"You can have it! You can have the body, you can have my life, just take it! I don't want it anymore!" They were pushing and shoving each other, trying to force the guilt and responsibility onto the other, struggling and wrestling wildly like twin siblings locked in war.

"Stop!" roared Zangetsu, leaping in between them and forcing them apart. "You, out!"

The Hollow danced back and forth nervously, a jester with stage fright, suddenly grinning with mad elation. "_Ha! Yeah Zan-jiji, you're right! He's got no choice if I leave!_" The white Ichigo span and gravity lurched around it, it leapt into the ocean of rain behind or below them, drowning itself in black foam and boiling waves.

The zanpakuto ignored it, tried to, but it should never have been so eager to give up the fight. He tried to get through to his host to no avail.

"Ichigo. Ichigo, listen to me. Go back outside, you can't stay inside forever. You'll wither away. You can't survive inside out."

"No," choked the boy, stumbling away, bright orange hair darkened to a weak brown in the downpour, as deformed as his emotions. "No. You – you can go out for me, Zangetsu-jii." He grabbed the sword by its shoulders, shunting it higher up the skyscraper as if that would automatically force it into the real world.

"What is _wrong_ with you? You cannot hesitate like this! Even when Karin was one of Aizen's pawns you found the strength to face her eventually. Retreat and you will die! If you keep this up you _will die. You must keep moving forwards._"

"That's all you ever say. That's your answer for everything, isn't it, real effective! But it doesn't work. I'll just keep doing it, Zangetsu. I'll keep killing people. It'll keep happening, as eternally as war. I'm destroying everything I go near!" The storm pelted them both, self-punishment.

"That was not done by you, it was the Hollow! How much of a fool are you, have you learnt _nothing_ since taking up a sword?"

The reaper let go, stumbled backwards, retreating nearer and nearer to the sea of torment that threatened to swallow his entire world. His head shook gently, hopelessly.

"Zangetsu…I realised, a while ago…I already _am_ the Hollow."

He was almost shrinking, an ant that had finally understood that its environment was far too vast for it to cope with. He had learnt how small he was, and weak; only seeming strong in comparison to his minute size.

"You know what it's been doing; it's been eating all my memories, all my heart, all my Soul Awakening… It's consumed all of me and left me with nothing…"

Back, and back, and back…closer and closer to drowning…

"See? The Hollow killed her and went crazy with regret. But I can't feel anything, Zangetsu. I'm empty. I'm hollow too. Probably since the start in the Shattered Shaft. Or before Rukia. My parents were both dead before I was born, that can't have been right. I could have always been Hollow. I can't go out...without hurting everyone I care about."

"Ichigo. You're overwhelmed, that is clearly not the truth. Stop! Fight it!"

"Actually," whispered the shadow as the water hit its back; "I'm a Hollow and you're a zanpakuto…so… Zangetsu… I don't want to eat my family…"

The waves ate his shoulders, his legs, his ribs, framed his face. There was only half a step left.

"_ICHIGO!_"

"I know you won't hesitate." The water rushed into his mouth, the words bubbled out. Damning. They had never been negative before. "I know you won't run away."

Zangetsu halted, dark cape drenched to the skin. He pulled off his amber shades, staring at the thrashing sea in disbelief. Ichigo was just a distorted smear of colour, sinking out of sight.

"How can you be so cruel?"

The sword knelt down, abandoned in a broken soul.

"…Don't ask me to kill you..."

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	38. Heartless Beat

**Hell Butterfly**

**Heartless Beat**

**~38~**

**o)0(o**

Orihime blinked awake. She felt fine. Lighter, in fact. Except for a slight weight on her heart and the burning, all-consuming sensation that there was something she really had to be doing. Something that just couldn't wait. But what might it be?

"…Maybe I left my toothbrush at the clinic?" she pondered. When she raised her hand to her chin and assumed the 'thinking position', a clinking metallic object brushed her arm.

A chain embedded in her chest. How odd. Now where had she seen that before? She tugged it: it hurt far more than the first time. And it was leading away to…to…to nothing. Wasn't her body meant to be at the other end, safe and sound, gold at the end of the grey rainbow?

But it was gone, and yet she was not, and she just couldn't fathom what her unfinished business might be.

The sickly aura of the Hollow had faded from the air, so she wandered around the small park in search of herself. Eventually she turned a corner and tripped right over the corpse, with a squeak and a muffled "Sorry!"

At the sight of her own demise her heart constricted and the chain lost two silver links. She hadn't fallen gracefully – more been dropped like a sack of bricks. Her clothes were streaked and puddled with red, hair clumped with it, eyes rolled back but lids open. Everything utterly limp. And a horrible smell in the air, the stench of the indignity of death. In the pool of blood, Ichigo seemed comatose. Something inside him had broken beyond repair.

But probably not because he'd been secretly in love with her the entire time, mused Inoue; which was a shame. Probably because he had failed again.

She counted the blades of grass breaking through the pavement, noted the single lamppost that wasn't lit yet in the mid-afternoon light, saw a million small details she would rather think about than the obvious.

Carefully stepping around her own gore, after taking a deep breath, she crouched down and laid a hand on her mussed ginger head, as if she could divine what was going on in there. She stroked the cold cheek gently, held her own hand. "Hello, Me."

"Don't worry. I'll look after you. See, in just a minute you'll be fine." Another silver ring vanished from her Chain of Fate. "You have to hold on, no matter what. You'll pull through, I promise." Her mouth squeezed into a tiny, tense smile. "See, see, we're not helpless anymore when these things happen… Ayame and Shun'ou will take care of everything."

Responding to her call the two fairies flashed out of her hairgrips, arcing over her head like wan fireworks. They were as faded as she felt inside.

"I'm…I'm not that unhappy," she protested feebly, waving. "Smile! In a little while it'll all be fine right?"

Shun'ou wrung his hands awkwardly. "Well, yes, but, only if it doesn't happen again."

"He isn't safe anymore," agreed Ayame; feeling the guilt that swelled up in the three of them as Inoue heard her own thoughts voiced.

As if to prove the Shun Shun Rikka right, a deep shadow was blooming above Ichigo, looming behind the fairies. It seemed to have no reiatsu, and Inoue leapt to the conclusion that it was dangerous. For just an instant she feared the Hollow had broken loose again.

When it coalesced into a man she had never seen before, with a face as stern as Yamamoto's hidden behind coloured shades, she began to be afraid for different reasons.

"Wait! Don't take him!"

Zangetsu glared at her, almost did a double-take, and then tried not to bash his head against the lamppost in exasperation. Of all the senseless… Ichigo was suffering a nervous breakdown, and the girl's ghost was stood there without a scratch.

"You're a little late," he growled forbiddingly, trying to convey all his disapproval in five small syllables.

"But not too late," said the girl quickly, attempting to edge between the zanpakuto and its master. "I realise you're some kind of other-otherworldly death god for shinigamis, but you can't have him. Because – because I'm a time lord!" she bluffed. "Well, time lady. And I've stolen him back from you before anyway! Um, please don't hate me for that," she added, as a small disclaimer.

His frown deepened. "You misunderstand me."

"Erk. You're here for me?" Inoue broke into a cold sweat. "I'm getting better! You really needn't bother…"

The sword raised his eyebrows, incredulous. She took that as a yes.

"I'm sorry Reaper-Reaper-san, but you can't have either of us."

The zanpakuto paused, curious. "Why not?" he asked, uncharacteristically gentle.

Orihime stepped forwards without fear, blazing with bright and sudden light. At her back the Souten Kesshun expanded, shining like the sun. "Because I will fix _everything_," vowed the human soul.

He dismissed this and turned back to his protégé. He stooped down and tilted the Kurosaki's head from side to side, contemplating how it could be hijacked. "The state Ichigo is in is not something anyone can fix. It's no physical scar you can simply reject."

"Hey!" yelled Tsubaki, materialising. He felt insulted on behalf of his siblings. "Who _the hell_ do you think you are?"

"I am Zangetsu;" declared the sword with great pride. "I am not here to perform any kind of konsou upon my host. War is at hand, war on an unprecedented scale that endangers all four realms. Even if Ichigo should crumble and fall for petty reasons, I shall never back down from my duty."

"_Zangetsu_…" breathed Tsubaki in awe, eyes sparkling. "I swear to all eight million kami I am your _biggest_ fan." He flew in loops around the zanpakuto. "If my mistress had just half your resolve! Man, I coulda sliced Aizen in half _weeks_ ago!"

Wavy brown hair and cloak as black as blindness ruffled by mysterious winds, the sword regarded the miniscule ninja in baffled silence. He wondered when and how the conversation had become so derailed.

"…Would you autograph my wing?"

Zangetsu felt a tad wrong-footed. Dare say, he hesitated. "I…don't have a pen."

The final three Shun Shun Rikka appeared, apologising profusely. "Don't mind our little brother," laughed Lily nervously; as Baigon and Hinagiku dragged Tsubaki away. "He just gets a little over-excited. Ha, ha…"

The man cloaked in darkness hid the fact that the attention was slightly pleasing. Instead he watched Inoue's body knit itself back together under Ayame's guidance. Before his very eyes her Chain of Fate was gaining more links, the pallor of death was fading from the human's face. Even though this was a miracle, it left him feeling nauseous. She was defying the natural order. She crossed barriers that only one other person could. That no one should.

"Can you…" Orihime fidgeted with the chain as the silver bond rejoined her body. "Can you tell Ichigo-kun I'm okay? He doesn't need to worry or anything. He died because of me before, and this…this just means we're even. He doesn't have to feel bad. I'll come back to Karakura. So please…"

Zangetsu laid a hand on her shoulder, though out of sympathy or respect he could not tell. Then without making any promises, he faded from sight.

**o)0(o**

All the towers were lying on a drunken diagonal slant, gravity had fallen over again, and the deep blue ocean sloped into the distance.

Ichigo sat where the sea scraped against the skyscraper; watching. His tawny hair had grown into a long tangled mane as if he had been waiting ten years for Zangetsu to return. And his skin was whiter than shock could make it, whiter than marble; and the zanpakuto wondered if it was really the Hollow crouching there, scouting for ghosts.

"Zangetsu;" the white strawberry greeted him, never shifting his focus from the turgid waters. "Have you ever realised you didn't know someone at all? _**I can't see that murdering bastard anywhere.**_"

"With you, every day," responded the sword, approaching his counterpart with caution.

"_**It's so irritating, **_I waited for her every single day. I was so sure her ghost would come find me,_**so**__**fucking dependent.**_ Even after Isshin-oyaji said he'd killed the Grand Fisher, even in Hueco Mundo, _**every single second in stinking Soul Society – **_I was always looking for her out the corner of my eye. I still need her. _**I never wanted to let someone be the centre of my universe again: a needy little crybaby who smiled like a fool for – **_someone I knew nothing about. I was just a kid, I had no clue what kind of person she was, I still don't even know her maiden name! They never told us anything about themselves _**because they were lying the whole time.**_ So I tried to be 'the one who protects' because I _**couldn't be **_Masaki's _**brat **_anymore. Now I know _**I can't protect anything…**_ When Karin came back I started thinking it was all gonna be okay. _**When I found Hachimitsu in the queenie I thought I could steal back everything I never had.**_ When I met Rukia I thought _**let me fight let me win let me rule **_but I never learned enough about shinigami _**never figured them out – **_'you're growing faster than anyone ever has' _**'you're stupid'**_'you're strong' _**'you're weak' **_'you ooze' _**'you're a monster'.**_ I actually thought this was my destiny. I even thought my mum might be proud of how strong I was like her. _**Bull shit. **_We're nothing alike. _**She was never a Hollow, she was just a Hollow's dinner. Just like the queenie. **_I ate them both."

Words flew from his mouth as fast as they whirled in his mind. Zangetsu had never heard him bare so much of himself before, they only sought each other out for combat, never for company. With a great wrench of effort the boy turned to face the zanpakuto spirit. In his irises, the warm brown of Ichigo and the cold gold of Hichigo had melded into burning amber.

"Help me _find that_ _**Hollow**_, Zangetsu; I'll _**kill him, and from now on **_I'll fight with my own strength. We _**don't need **_him. I have Soul Awakening. I'll awaken my whole soul, as far _**as it goes, we'll kill the Hollow with **_just you and me. It's never been just us before now; _**he's always been in the way,**_ when he's _**gone I'll have total control…**_ I'll be stronger. _On my own, I'll be enough."_

The Kurosaki-come-Shirosaki stood, faced his mentor, revealing the gaping hole in his chest he hadn't even realised was there. It shrank when Ichigo spoke in his own voice, swelled when he rasped in Hichigo's voice, marking their rise and fall. The pulse of insanity, the pump of a fading heart.

**o)0(o**

A lone girl boards the train, luggage straining one hand, the other curled but empty. She sits with her head down in isolation. The seat beside her is vacant yet she glances at it from time to time in concern. The carriage shifts from side to side as it races along the track, stopping and starting, crowds ebbing and flowing. She barely registers them; staring at her shoes, her lap, out of the window to the pebble-grey clouds gathering in the sky.

She clings to the hand of a ghost with all her strength.

He does not respond, only standing when she drags him to his feet, only walking where she leads, only seeing what is inside him, unaware she is even there.

She huddles on the train, totally surrounded and totally alone, and tries to protect him.

**o)0(o**

"_**I want revenge**_," snarled the boy in a small twisted voice. "_I don't care about protecting people any more._ Look _**at all these**_ other souls in me. The same thing happened_** to all of them**_. At some point they had to give way and become_** me**_. What_** am I fighting for?**_ It'll all end up in_** the same place**_." Heavy, dense, liquid reiatsu was dripping from the tatters of Ichigo's shihakusho. It pooled at his bare white feet like ink, blue-black, plus and minus, crawling down towards the sea of sorrow in thin rivulets. The waves darkened even further, transforming. As the Hollow had promised, he was feeding off his despair.

That entire ocean would soon become fuel for his vengeance against himself.

"How will you conquer Hichigo now?" asked Zangetsu sadly, hand drifting to the void that dilated and contracted fitfully, an empty heartbeat in Ichigo's chest. "You can't find the Hollow because you're not looking at yourself."

The hybrid looked down, cracked a warped smile. "Aah, I told you I was the Hollow. _**But then I thought I must be wrong, because **_why do hearts still hurt after they've been thrown anyway? Dad calls it phantom pain._**Why do I still feel empty when I'm finally human for the first time?**_"

The blade shook its head in defeat. "I don't know what you are."

Half a sneer. "You should. _**You're the one that gives the orders, retard. **__Fight your Hollow, fight your zanpakuto, fight the vaizards, fight, fight, fight!_ No one ever told me why I was doing this, _**I just do what I'm told.**_"

Zangetsu glared at him. The words were lies, rotting in the air. It had always been Ichigo's choice to chase danger, rather than let it creep up behind him. "And who told you to break, Ichigo?"

The hole in his torso opened wide, a hungry mouth. "_**I did!**_"

"Why!"

"_**It's impossible to be two people!**_ Every other Hollow is itself, a broken version of themselves, _**not a parasite inside someone else! **_I can't become a true Hollow until one of us breaks. _You can't become someone else without forgetting who you were before."_

Zangetsu threw the creature to the ground, whatever it was, it was not Ichigo. He did not recognise it at all. A razor sharp blade appeared in his outstretched hand, black as oblivion, guardless, hiltless, a sword only for cutting, a sword without regret. The demon raised its pale arms in defence, trying to shield its head. It spat words like daggers.

"_**Do you realise Hollows are just scapegoats? Sacrifices so humans aren't sent to Hell for their crimes? **_I don't want to be that. _**All the lives and memories in this city, **_I don't want to let them go, but it's like holding onto fire. _**I could go completely insane and destroy them all. **_But they don't want me to. They won't let me."

Zangetsu held the zanpakuto over his friend, ready to swing it down and straight through the abomination. It was a cancer, a mutation of the emotions. If two opposites cannot bring balance, then they can only bring annihilation.

"**I don't know how to protect anything, especially not myself, **_they all want different things, Zangetsu, and it hurts. I couldn't hear them before. The Hollow shielded me from the voices. _**This is what my mother was. **_Insane, impossible. Can't be two people at once. _**Can't be a thousand memories at the same time. **_It hurts, Zangetsu. _Help me."

"If you were truly Ichigo, you would keep fighting." The black fang arced down, biting into the moon-white monster.

A bare palm caught the descending blade. "I didn't just want to fight, Zangetsu, I wanted to win. But this isn't something I can win against, it's inevitable. We're all playing at being death gods, but we can't win against it. None of them rule death itself. And the Hollows aren't throwing their hearts away, they're just so much more scared of losing them. They hold on so hard they break. Hichigo wanted to keep Inoue, not kill her. It was always only the ghosts that could let go that could move on, I never realised before. That's why all the ones hanging around the clinic were so clingy and annoying. Is it any wonder that all of Hueco Mundo will follow Aizen, when he says he can be god and change the entire universe?"

His voice had calmed, the pulse that opened and closed the hole in his chest was slowing. Tears streamed down his cheeks, no longer tumbling from the sky. He lay on the floor looking so helpless, yet with all his might Zangetsu could not cut him.

"Yeah, all those souls inside me are complaining about what they want and can't have, but they gave up on those things the day they died. I can just ignore their opinions, right? As soon as I remember which one is me, I can reject all the others..."

Ichigo flexed his fingers and the sword crumpled like foil. The tears kept falling, yet the rainclouds had fled.

"If the Hollow just trusted me…we'd be fine, right? And all that stuff about Hachimitsu or whatever her name was…I'll just have to wait until I bump into her in another life right? Same with my mother, same with everyone, same with you, right, Zangetsu?"

The zanpakuto looked at his wrinkled blade, unimpressed, and flicked it over his shoulder into the sea. "I don't know why you're asking me. Souls affect each other by proximity, you must have been infected with Soul Awakening when Masaki carried you. I have known you in many other lives and never heard of it before, so don't expect me to know the cure." They watched each other, wary, utterly trusting.

"You've been yelling it at me from the start!_ Never retreat._"

"Ichigo, the only way to protect a thing is not to give up. I have always only been trying to protect you. You chose to be weak, you decided you couldn't cope. Try again, and I will teach you how to only move forwards."

Ichigo sighed heavily and sat up, the Hollow just another thought in the back of his mind, the hole in his heart just a tiny pinprick, a wound he acknowledged but did not succumb to. "Since moving backwards is impossible, and standing still is useless."

**o)0(o**

We always look to the eyes first, for they tell us the most, and we stare every time, learning all we can. But sometimes there were demons hidden in Ichigo's eyes that led a person to fear, and so she did not look at them.

She heard his waking gasp, the scrape of soft air in a dry mouth; found herself panicking suddenly, nervous and clammy.

She dropped his hand like a hot potato, too late, had he already noticed?

For a minute of disorientation his breath was caught, his lungs did not twitch; he was transfixed on the should-be-dead girl beside him. The train barely registered, every one of the million thoughts tangling in his mind flew straight out the window: leaving him with a blank slate that had no idea what to do.

Teeth biting into her lip, Inoue twisted her body slightly away from him. Her suitcase was tucked beneath her seat and her legs curled up in the cramped space, shins resting against the seat in front; a pen and notepad in her hands.

She hid the page surreptitiously.

Ichigo's brain belatedly remembered how to function.

"YOU'RE MEANT TO BE DEAD!"

It hadn't quite finished installing tact yet, though.

"S-s-shhh!" hissed Orihime, frantic. "This is a quiet zone!"

"I just realise you're alive and that's the first thing you say to me?" asked Ichigo incredulously, punching the arm rest. "Is shut up? I killed you! You should be angrier!"

"I'm angry!" agreed Orihime with a look of mild annoyance. "This has just voided at least a third of my list! But if they catch me shouting at an empty seat, they'll think I'm insane."

Ichigo instinctively knew that following her tangents right now would likely cause his head to explode, so he ploughed on with his questions. "How are you here? Why didn't I see your ghost anywhere? Why the hell are we on a train?"

She blushed deeply and peered at the other occupants of the carriage slyly. "Well we're going back to Karakura because leaving didn't help at all," murmured the girl from the corner of her mouth, feigning normality. "And healing my injuries wasn't hard. Creepy, but not difficult."

"Those weren't just injuries, they were fatal!" whispered back the strawberry, forgetting he was inaudible as well as invisible. "Not that I'm trying to rub in your recent murder or...whatever..." he added wretchedly.

"I brought you back from a ball of fluff, Ichigo-kun," she artlessly reminded him. "This was much easier."

"You should've left me there and kept going. My dad's gonna give you a whole stack of leaflets on how to get out of abusive relationships when we get back," threatened Ichigo, if self-help could be considered threatening.

"I tried," shrugged the girl. "But it runs in my family. Maybe it's my destiny. At least we've proved I can't outrun you." In her imagination, Champ-Orihime was swearing to make a come-back at the last possible second. Champ-Orihime never took no for an answer!

"Don't be so retarded," said the murderer awkwardly; knowing he was a complete hypocrite. "Who'd have a fate like that…?"

"Well it's a conspiracy, you know, the Inbo Gnomes tried to get me through bullies, but Tatsuki rescued me…through my parents, but Sora rescued me; through Sora, but you rescued him; through you, but I rescued me… loads of times! If the gnomes are going to get me no matter what, I'd rather be with my friends. Do you really think bad things only happen because of Hollows?"

He flinched as she threw his words in his face, words he'd once said to Rukia. "I didn't always."

"Really, Hollows happen because of bad things."

Ichigo leaned back against the chair, utterly exhausted. He didn't have the energy left to process that. "Huh."

They both sat in silence, Inoue scrawling on her secretive notebook, Ichigo staring wide-eyed at all the wonderfully normal living things around him. A train full of people that had nothing scarier than deadlines to fight every day, and out the window were patches of countryside flickering past. He was so sick of looking at storms and skyscrapers, that he was sorely tempted to get off at the next stop and go climb a tree or something. But the shifting of the train was also comforting. A very human, real world invention that meant he was a million miles away from Hueco Mundo and Soul Society and the empty city under his subconscious.

Inoue didn't seem affected in the least, which was worrying. Power over life and death? He hadn't thought about it much in the past, but clearly the ability to reject any mistake had warped her at some point. Like she had lost her sense of perspective, because consequences were no longer absolute; or lost her survival instincts because death was no longer an issue.

The very moment he had learned to let go and succumb to the inevitable, Orihime had done the exact opposite.

But he tried not to change his mind, tried desperately not to cling to the past anymore, because he never wanted to go through that madness again.

"If I had your power," he blurted out before he could stop himself; "I probably would have tried to resurrect my mother."

"Oh." said the girl very, very quietly.

"...Why didn't...I mean...did you never even consider..."

"Of course," she said softly, shrinking, curling even further into a ball. "But there's no place for them anymore. It's not like you and me: really-near-death experiences. They're off the records, they couldn't work or travel or see anyone they knew, they'd live in hiding and be lonely, then they'd die and become Hollow again; just so we felt a little bit better? I don't want to see Sora that twisted again, wearing a mask and with a snake body and saying things that aren't him! He chose to go. Masaki chose to protect you. Why betray them now? Besides it's not natural and it's probably a paradox and Keigo-kun told me dividing by zero was bad for the universe and..."

Ichigo said nothing, but heard the Hollow somewhere within him sigh in loneliness. "I would rather be a vaizard than have no defence at all, but it keeps escalating every freaking fight. I cracked completely. I want this war to be over and it hasn't even started yet."

"It hasn't all been bad," said Inoue with a smile. "There were lots of donuts!"

They sat side by side on the train, the year's tragedies and glories hanging between them. Each felt the weight of the scars they had collected on their travels to hell and back for each other's sakes. And without their eyes meeting, both smiled at the memories of laughter and sunny days and every donut in the shop.

Her hand shifted closer to his slowly, fingertips brushing the back of his hand so lightly it made her skin tingle. Every time she had touched him before, he had been sick, asleep, or chilled by the pervasion of the Hollow. Today he was awake, aware and warm.

Today his wrist tilted and his fingers wrapped around hers.

**o)0(o**

They were walking through Karakura's streets, deserted due to the impending inclement weather. Inoue was giggling about haunted suitcases as an invisible boy had politely offered to carry hers. Ichigo shuddered as the heavens opened and the rain came pouring down. "I hate rain," he gloomed, hunching down inside his shihakusho.

"Really? I like it. Oh no," gasped Orihime, the compatibility sleuth all of a sudden. "Perhaps this means we're fundamentally too different after all."

"I don't think that's important…" argued Ichigo weakly. "And why fundamentally?" He was ignored in favour of yet another Inoue Special Moment.

"But have you never imagined what it's like to be a raindrop? First you're just innocently swimming around, in a puddle or the sea, and then suddenly you're evaporating! And you're just steaming up, and it's so hot you can't stand it, but then it's alright, because now you're flying way up high. You can see for miles and all your friends are in a cloud around you. But later it gets chilly, and scary," she wibbled, gesticulating wildly; "and everyone's plummeting down like their water-wings got cut off! And it's terrifying. You smash against the ground like WHAM! _Splash!_ Finally, you realise you're your old self again, and it's okay because you're back home bringing life to the earth." She nodded happily, eyes closing as she watched this watery action-thriller in her imagination. "Rain is _amazing_."

Ichigo stared at her like she'd grown an extra head. Did she think like this _all the time? _How? Why hadn't her brain popped from overstimulation?

"If I were the rain that connects the earth and sky, whom in all eternity will never mingle; would I be able to bind two hearts together?" she hummed, almost under her breath.

He lifted his sword and attempted to use Zangetsu as an umbrella, frowning as per usual. "Is that from something famous?"

"…No; me. I know it sounds like a love poem but," she hastened to correct what she thought he thought; "it's what I used to wonder when I thought Sora was in heaven and I was stuck on earth and the only thing that could travel between us was the rain…" _And only a teeny weeny tiny itsy bit about you too._

"…I like that," realised Ichigo, as moment by moment the downpour felt more like a blessing than a curse haunting him. It was calming, hopeful. Inoue was already babbling on:

"But my second plan was to tame a wild bird and train it to carry my messages."

"Uh huh."

"Or learn to fly a plane. I definitely wanted to be a pilot. In a super stealth invisible harrier jet!"

"…Right." He hid a laugh. It occurred to him that he would have to listen to every insane idea she ever concocted, because she wasn't Isshin who he could gently kick in the head to switch off the insanity.

Ah well. He could deal. He'd had a lifetime of training to put up with jabbering lunatics after all…

**o)0(o**

Ichigo and Orihime held hands all the way back to the clinic - the former's excuse that it would hold the remnants of his Hollow in check, the latter not needing any excuse in particular. However, they should have thought twice before entering the house in such a state.

"MY GAYDAR IS GOING OFF!" roared Isshin from his office, toppling off his swivel chair and charging into the hallway.

"Who you calling gay?" yelled Ichigo, catching the overgrown man-child by the face and gagging him, before a neat forced face-plant into the floor.

"As in, 'exceedingly happy', my dear uneducated offspring!" retorted his father, raising a wobbling hand.

Yuzu appeared stealthily at the end of the hallway, drawn to romantic comedy like a shark drawn to bloody water.

"Yuzu! Bring the stethoscopes!" Isshin dragged himself upright with tremendous willpower, and immediately began studying the pair's clasped hands with a magnifying glass he'd pull from his pocket. "Definite symptoms of _amantes sunt amentes_ syndrome," he muttered, prodding their fingers with a thermometer.

Yuzu scurried back into the corridor with two stethoscopes and eyes gleaming. Taking one each, the doctor and his nurse-in-training proceeded to check their patients' heartbeats, communicating in strange one-handed gestures and bizarre faces all the while.

"I'm very sorry," sighed the little girl with a manner beyond her years. "You are without a doubt lovesick, but Dr Kurosaki can offer you a second opinion if you feel it necessary."

"That's okay!" chirped Inoue. "I believe you. In fact I've known it was chronically terminal for ages."

Despite standing right next to her, Ichigo failed to hear these words as he and Isshin could not go sixty seconds without antagonising each other. "WOULD YOU GET OUT OF MY FACE? Go stitch someone else up! We've had a really shitty day, so don't bother us until your stupid curfew!"

"Oh MY," gasped Isshin in awe. "Such stamina! Well, you know where the box of freebies for the clinic is, and if you encounter any, ah, dysfunctions, I offer a confidential drop-in service between 4 and 6pm..."

The strawberry went an unprecedented shade of red, and Yuzu handed Orihime a tissue to stem her sudden nosebleed.

"Stop leaping to conclusions and shut up, baka-oyaji! We'll just be...studying, or something..."

"STUDYING THE KAMA SU-"

Isshin died messily of blunt trauma applied to the cranium via his firstborn's foot.

"JUST. STUDYING. HOMEWORK!" roared the vaizard, snatching Inoue's notebook from her hand and driving it into his father's face.

Isshin was silent a moment as he tried to focus on the open page.

"...Number One: Contact Aliens and get them to Skywrite it."

"…What?"

"Number Two: Ad lib. Three: Intimidate with Sumo Wrestlers until Accepted. Four: Take Him Down in a Dark Alley like Tatsuki-chan said."

She had indeed tackled him for no apparent reason when they were taking a shadowy shortcut. He'd assumed it was delayed revenge, and far less than he deserved. Ichigo peeled the writing pad off his father's face and read it in bafflement. "Five: Jedi Mind Trick. Six: Recite a Famous Poem. Seven: Express Myself Through Song. Eight: Hire a Cheerleading Squad Dressed as Leeks. What the hell is this? Why are some of these ticked off?"

"Oh, you were out of it for a _long_ time...so I practiced?" explained the girl with big innocent eyes.

"I don't even get what these are for." His eyes travelled further down the list and he was forced to stop frowning just so he could raise his eyebrows high enough. "_Octopus?_"

"Well they were going to be a lucky dip and you had to pick a number from 1 to 57 but now you read them and CHEATED so it's all ruined and now there's no right way to do it!" Her eyes were tearing up and her arms flailing, then to everyone's utter astonishment Orihime knelt down, crawled over to the middle of the hallway and hid under the rug. "That's so ridiculously embarrassing I have to stay under here until the ground swallows me…" she informed her audience solemnly.

There was a moment of perfect silence as the auburn-haired girl tucked the fluffy white mat neatly around herself. Yuzu looped her stethoscope behind her neck and reached for the notebook, plucking it from her brother's unresisting hands. Stumbling over a few of the names, she read out the longest one. "Number Forty-Nine: As soon as he wakes up yell 'OF COURSE I'LL GO OUT WITH YOU' as if it was his idea and he just fainted and forgot, then if he resists knock him out, tie him up and fly to Las Vegas and marry Hichigo whilst he's asleep because at least Hichigo likes me, and if he still rejects me after that; threaten to go out with Ulquiorra/Grimmjaw/Ishida-kun instead; and if he says 'see if I care' elope with Rukia as revenge so he gets neither of us! …_Wow_."

"That's extremely thorough," remarked Isshin, shell-shocked. "...Highly commendable. Planning is half the battle."

Yuzu laughed and did a wriggly that-is-so-cute-I'm-gonna-die dance. She was a born gossip-hound. She had no idea who Grimmjaw and Ulquiorra were.

Ichigo's brain was flinging up a 404 Error - Appropriate Reaction Not Found. He was convinced the Hollow was cheering somewhere in the depths of his soul. It was like having a bucket of ice cold water chucked over his head, followed by a bathtub of _very hot water_. He croaked, expecting black smoke to spew from his mouth as the cogs tangled.

"What's the matter, Nii-chan?" asked his little sister, who would one day grow into a complete man-eater and couldn't understand his hesitance. "Ooh, what's number fifteen? 'Same as last time?'"

Her father stage-whispered, conspiratorial yet loud. "The problem is, Yuzu-chan, that my dear son is very shy around women but not naïve, whereas my fifth daughter over there is very naïve but not shy at all. Why only the other week my friend Yoruichi was telling me about one time when Ichigo…"

"Shut up, retard," commanded the strawberry in a doom-laden voice. "And Orihime, get up and put the rug back."

The two lunatics obeyed meekly.

"Last time?" he repeated. "You've never mentioned this to me before."

"A-ah! You were asleep and I was invisible! It was before I went to Las Noches – Ulquiorra gave me a magic bracelet so I could walk through walls and told me to say goodbye to one person only, so I chose you. But you wouldn't have known even if you were awake."

He paused, scowling. "What the hell was the point in that?"

Inoue stared at the ceiling and tapped her mouth in thought. Ichigo caught himself staring and dragged his eyes away. "Well, because I healed you, and left a To Do list for Rangiku-san, the Soutaicho decided it wasn't kidnap. And he was right, you know, because it was _actually blackmail._"

The ginger boy coughed and crossed his arms inside the shihakusho sleeves, glancing slyly at his family. "So uh…what did you say last time?" Trying to look completely unbothered; as if very curvy girls asked him out all the time, and failing pathetically.

"I thought you might pick number fifteen, it's your lucky number," chirped his suitor with a dazzling smile. "You need to bandage your hands and lie on the floor. Pretend this is your duvet." She passed him the rug with a perfectly straight face.

He dropped it with a similarly straight face. "No. You can skip that part. Or were you planning to re-enact Hueco Mundo too?"

"You don't think Ishida-kun could cosplay Ulquiorra?" asked the daydreamer, crestfallen. Ichigo bopped her on the head, and she flinched, her body remembering the claws of not long ago. Yet they both pretended not to notice, and soldiered onwards. "Stop getting distracted and spit it out," he prompted.

"Well first, I ghosted straight through your window," she wriggled her arms, ghoul-like; then wisely chose to abbreviate her drama when he frowned at her pleadingly. "Essentially I could have five different careers in five different lifetimes but I would fall in love with the same person every time." Her face went pink.

Ichigo seemed not to be listening.

A thousand different faces and memories were bubbling up in his mind, things he'd forgotten, secrets the Hollow had discovered within the city of mirrors and kept for itself in hopes of building a heart with them. But now Ichigo was the Hollow and vice versa, it existed as a another thought in his head and just another choice he could make; rather than the invader of his soul. Now Ichigo was privy to Hichigo's true feelings. And although these remembrances were meant to hurt like a dagger in his back, lost days they could never return to; they were strangely comforting. Because she was right here, Hachimitsu and all the others. She had survived everything thrown at her and returned to him without a hint of bitterness.

"You're completely impossible..."

Orihime panicked slightly. Perhaps she would have to resort to #54: Seduction, but although Rangiku-chan had heartily recommended this tactic it still seemed like a last resort measure. She scooted a little closer to the object of her affections. "I - I was going to, um, kiss you in your sleep back then but it seemed rude without permission plus you might have woken up like Sleeping Beauty and caught me at the scene of crime;" stammered the Princess Charming. "Also there was the time when I resurrected you but I think I earned that one so-"

"It doesn't matter how you say it," whispered the vaizard in two voices; "as long as you say it."

Ichigo's eyes glinted gold as he focused on her with all his being, the good and the bad. The scowl softened, he smiled in the way that made her breath stop and her heart skip – the distance separating them melted away…

"_AWWWW!"_ yelled the pair of onlookers, as loudly and obnoxiously as humanly possible.

Ichigo whipped round, hefting the might of Zangetsu in one angry hand. "Scuse me, I need to kill a couple of witnesses."

"You won't hurt me!" squeaked Yuzu, 90% sure and bravely holding her ground.

"He'll definitely hurt me!" bawled Isshin, 100% sure and diving for cover.

**o)0(o**

In the privacy of his room Ichigo mellowed out, and once more turned that magical smile on Orihime. It made her feel warm and cosy and eternally astonished he could actually pull off such a big smug grin. She found herself wondering if what Tatsuki said was true; that had Masaki never died, Ichigo would have grown up as bubbly as Inoue herself. That maybe they weren't too different.

Her mouth crimped into a smile and she made to pounce on him, but he held her at arm's length. _No!_ cried Robohime mentally. _ I have waited over two years, undergoing countless modifications to survive and even been turned into a battle-cyborg to reach this moment!_

"Orihime," he said slowly, voice slightly scratchy, and still those hints of amber in his irises. Rain was still drumming heavily against the window, the shadows of clouds darkening the unlit room. "You know I'm not just me anymore, don't you? Are you crazy? You'll be going out with the guy that just murdered you." He felt moral-bound to remind her it was a stupid thing to do, but he prayed with every fibre of his being that she'd be spacing out and not hear him say it, or something.

"It is _OH-KAY_," replied the ginger girl immediately. She flashed him a thumbs up and an intrepid-trailblazer expression. "I have never hated Hollows. I'm going to found the AA support group. Well, VA for you. Hey, do you reckon Hacchi-san would join?"

"Uh…"

"Anyway, back to business." Inoue dodged the hand blocking her way and bear-hugged the shinigami. She was immediately enveloped by his scent that she had a bloodhound's sensitivity to, and despite not smelling like strawberries it was still rather sweet. The boy quickly discovered that having a beautiful girl crush his ribs was exactly what his dormant hormones required to function, and found himself kissing her before he even realised it.

-and kept kissing her. Reading the braille of thrilled goosebumps, the shiver of lip against pulse. There no death this time, no despair, no crushing realisation that he was helpless against his own desire to destroy. Just a heated embrace and honey-sweet emotions.

Because the Hollow had learned how to protect, and Ichigo had been shown how to need someone with all his heart.

The ghost and the star edged towards the rather inviting bed across the room - however the star was above such foolish mortal considerations as balance and coordination; so inevitably tripped over something on the floor and crashed into the wardrobe. The ghost face-palmed, leaning down to help her up.

The cupboard door slid open and they both screamed.

Rukia stared at their flushed faces, ruffled orange hair and heaving chests, drawing the obvious conclusion. Then she coolly waited for Ichigo to reach boiling point, and cut in just as he opened his mouth to bellow at her.

"Ichigo! I'm trying to work in here! Get your own room!"

"THIS_ IS_ MY ROOM!"

"I have a lieutenant's right to requisition it in pursuit of my duties," lied the tiny shinigami, making laws up on the spot. "I can't concentrate in Division Thirteen. The Third Seats are too annoying. I'm very happy for you both, just ravage each other elsewhere."

The substitute steamed, and his girlfriend looked devastated. "Don't be happy about it, Rukia-chan! We're rivals! If there's no love triangle we won't be able to outnumber him, and then the girl's team will lose!"

"Piss off before I toss you out the window," was Ichigo's mature solution.

The bedroom door clicked open and Isshin poked his head into the room, Yuzu close behind. They both had their stethoscopes pressed against the wooden door. "You can borrow my double bed if you like," the proud father offered, grinning maliciously, whilst the sister squealed in glee.

Ichigo threw a chair at him, and things promptly went downhill from there.

**o)0(o**

_**Bloomake!**_

_Shinigami Cup!_

**o)0(o**

Ichigo sighed heavily and sat up, the Hollow just another thought in the back of his mind, the hole in his heart just a tiny pinprick, a wound he acknowledged but did not succumb to. "Since moving backwards is impossible, and standing still is useless, and going sideways would be…let's not go there."

Zangetsu coughed guiltily. "I recall one person who can reject the passage of time."

"YOU BASTARD!" roared the vaizard, lifting up the zanpakuto spirit deity and flinging him off the skyscraper. "WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY THAT IN THE BEGINNING?"

"I didn't want you to be dependent on others!" protested the sword, in a rapidly diminishing voice as he fell towards the horizon…

**o)0(o**

"I brought you back from a ball of fluff. I've seen your heart, Ichigo," said Orihime seriously. Then her eyes popped wide open. "And your brain, and your kidneys, and your spleen, and your-"

"TOO MUCH INFORMATION!"

"The spleen is a very weird colour, you know, and it's not where I thought it was, and..."

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOULD YOU PLEASE SHUT UP! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT MY SPLEEN!"

**o)0(o**

"But, but,'' whined Yuzu; "I'm the only one who can't tell when Nii-chan's not in his body!"

Rukia raised a permanent marker. "I know! For Kon, we'll draw a liony red beard on. And for Hichigo emergencies - an evil black moustache. And if Ichigo's just sleeping we'll draw a green - for safe - scowl - for Ichigo." She popped the cap back on with a sense of satisfaction.

"And when no one's in it yet it can just be blank." She reached for a cloth. "...Ah...they're not coming off..."

Ichigo's soul walked in and saw what looked like finger-paints all over his other face. "WTF happened?"

"DON'T PANIC!" cried Yuzu. "I know it seems like Hichigo took over your body whilst Bostov was sleeping, but it's _not what it looks like_!"

**o)0(o**

_**Chapter notes:**__ Amantes sunt amentes – latin for 'lovers are lunatics', and there are indeed hundreds of versions of the confession that I may turn into a spin off. I've been trying to figure out how to get it right since HB began. For IchiHime loathers, fear not. This chapter was ridiculously long so that I could squeeze it all into one. It'll tone down after this. But hopefully I've converted a couple of ya. ; )_

_Not sure what everyone thinks of the manga at the moment, but I'm pretty pleased at the things HB has managed to foreshadow – especially the Shiten Koushun. There's been a few others too, to varying degrees of accuracy; but seeing as I came up with most of HB two years ago, sometimes what was original back then has become canon by the time it posts. Guess I need to speed up the writing. xD_

_PLEASE, PLEASE REVIEW! Especially if you haven't before. : D_

_Alliriyan~*_


	39. Retrograde

**Hell Butterfly**

**Retrograde**

**~39~**

**o)0(o**

Renji and Rukia's friendship had always been a fact of life. They didn't remember their first meeting. They had simply been a part of each other's scenery, as guaranteed as the earth beneath their bare feet and the sky above their tangled heads.

There was no knowing if Hisana had abandoned her baby sister on the doorstep of Renji's den of thieves, or whether a member of their gang had taken pity on the infant squalling in an alleyway, or even if a curious and unattended child had crawled all the way to the riverbank that became their home.

But ever since their first meeting, however it came to pass, they had been inseparable. Chasing and taunting and wrestling like siblings, stealing sweets and tricking merchants with their motley crew like a wolf pack, growing and learning step for step. Once Renji had even turned down an offer of family, and passage to a better way of life for the sake of staying among his peers.

All their friends had been that close, thick as thieves, relying on each other not for the food their bodies no longer required, but the company their souls thirsted for. Yet the years lay more heavily on the urchins of Rukongai Red Dog District, and soon it was only the scant advantages of high reiatsu that kept Renji and Rukia going as all their companions grew older, slower, dissatisfied and eventually still.

They spent a hundred years together by the river. And when the last pair of Rukia's adopted strays were laid to rest beneath the mud, when she could no longer cling to her childhood with Homura and Shizuku gone… with she and Renji both too ravenous to sustain themselves and too rough to get by in better districts… when the realities of hunger, age and survival meant that neglect and wildness could no longer be dubbed freedom…

That was when they sold out to the soul reapers.

But at least they did it together.

**o)0(o**

The first day at the academy, they both spent the entire day at the cafeteria and skipped all lessons in favour of stuffing themselves to the gills on food. They'd never known it could be so varied, so achingly delicious, or that so much could be crammed into a belly that was already bursting.

They also didn't know that the punishment for truanting was first to be denied food for a week (only officers used enough energy to actually suffer malnutrition in that time); and then for stealing it anyway, to be forced to scrub all the dojos under the watchful eyes of some clean-freak from Fourth Squad... and when they locked him in a closet without even asking where the cleaning materials were...

That was the day they got to see Unohana Retsu angry.

The ice was still crawling down their spines when they left her office, with fixed innocent smiles and wide, horrified eyes. Laughing nervously and trying to shrug off the healer's nightmarish rage, they staggered back to the school in search of their new 'mentors'.

**o)0(o**

Kira, a solemn young man who tended to complete his homework about an hour after it was handed out, stared at the two hooligans that had been thrust upon him with mild dismay. The hooligans were far more honest, and gawked back with naked repulsion.

"Oh hell, look at this rich kid they've given us," said Rukia loudly, gesturing at him and looking back to Renji with raised eyebrows. "Depressed, shy and uptight. What in the name of all that is Hollow are we meant to learn from this streak of piss?"

Her friend burst out laughing, spiky red hair tied back with a rag bouncing all over the place. "How to cry and hide from bullies?"

Izuru spluttered and tried to assert himself. "Y-you two aren't even in uniform yet! You've been here a week! Didn't you even try to follow the instructions you were given?"

"Uhh..."

"Even if no one took you through it, there's posters everywhere with where you need to go written on them!"

"Can't read," said Renji lazily, picking his nose and staring at something out the window.

"I can only read graffiti," agreed Rukia, yawning. "Gang signs and shit."

Izuru stiffened in polite horror. "But you're _adults_. Don't you know _anything?_ You haven't followed a single rule since you got here! You should have asked one of the staff what to do. Who dragged you up anyway?"

"He did," said the short dark-haired woman abruptly, pointing at Renji.

Kira's expression withered. "And you come from?"

The man stood to his full height, and loomed over the blond student. His grin was savage. "Red Dog District. You wouldn't last two minutes."

The rich boy turned away, shaking his head. "I suggest you go back there. This is a learning institution, there's no place for feral strays here."

The vagrants glanced at each other, mystified. "Didn't that Zaraki become a captain here? That's what I wanted to do."

"Maybe this is the wrong academy," muttered back Rukia. "I haven't seen anyone here fight a Hollow or nothing. And what about demon magic? That sounded awesome."

Renji opened his palm and glared for a moment until a soft blue sphere glowed into existence. She snorted at him and created her own globe of reiatsu, larger and more controlled. It made the skin on Kira's neck itch.

"What are you doing?" he asked incredulously. Didn't they know kido was forbidden outside of the training fields?

"Oh, I guess you can't do this," said Renji smugly. "Took a few months to master it."

Izuru formed a ball of reiatsu instantly, and let it fade much like their smirks. "Are you kidding? I was taught that in an hour."

Incensed, both street rats punched him in perfect tandem, one to the jaw and one to the gut. Kira folded in half, choking. Rukia spat at him as Renji swept his legs out from beneath him and left him gasping on the floor.

"We weren't _taught_," hissed the woman, throwing him a rude gesture and stalking away.

"Shall we steal some more of that food before we go?" murmured Renji, and she nodded vigorously.

A light voice interrupted them – Hinamori had been listening in from the corridor. "You actually like that rubbish?"

The pair glared at her, defensive.

"All I'm saying is, the food from the market is much better!" said Momo quickly and soothingly.

Two heavenly cakes later, they were both bribed into joining civilised society.

**o)0(o**

From the first impressions, Kira hadn't expected the four of them to become such fast friends, and if Renji graduating to the advanced class with him was a surprise (he preferred to attribute this to Abarai's somewhat haphazard control of his high reiatsu requiring extra study hours); then Rukia's adoption into the Noble House of Kuchiki floored him. She took to her new surroundings like a duck to icy water – at first slipping up, but eventually making it her element. Renji on the other hand took to stomping around in a badly hidden temper all the time. He threw himself into training and targeted the man who had stolen his best friend away: Kuchiki Byakuya.

Of course, Renji and Rukia's interdependence had never been challenged before in decades, and they had no idea how to deal with obstacles or separation, which was why the rift between them grew so swiftly. Izuru kept his theories in that regard to himself though, after the first mention of it lead to a very punishing spar between he and Renji. More of a beating, really.

The day Renji became his nemesis's lieutenant, Kira practically fainted. That illiterate man-child had made vice-captain? Seriously?

Needless to say, when Abarai became Izuru's taicho, he decided the world wasn't fair and quietly died on the inside.

**o)0(o**

Rukia had experienced a multitude of reactions to her adoption. In some ways she was a good candidate – for all she knew she had been born into the afterlife like all the real nobles were, pureblood reapers that never knew a physical form. Also forty or fifty years in Rukongai had taught her how to be haughty and lord it over her peers, another noble trait. But in the majority of ways, Byakuya could not have chosen a worse sister even if he'd picked Zaraki Kenpachi over her. She was a nameless, graceless, penniless orphan, and all his stoic pride only proved that she'd been living on bravado and fighting dirty all her life.

Her suitability to the role was not her only concern. She'd seen a photo of his wife, that Hisana, and they truly were identical to each other. But why would a lonely, grieving man then seek a constant reminder living in his house? Why invite some bratty girl into the house just to stab his heart with her similarities every day?

"Izuru," said Rukia in all seriousness during a brief meeting between lessons. "Tell Renji to bust me out of that mansion at midnight. I think Kuchiki-taicho is grooming me as a replacement wife."

It was unusual for him, but Kira couldn't help bursting out laughing. "Really, Rukia? Everyone knows that Hisana was like the most elegant flower that just happened to grow in the wild, and you're..."

"A thistle?" replied the thief acerbically.

"I was going to say 'you're the wild that just happens to be in a flowerbed'."

"That's pretty damn accurate," said a low, joking voice behind them.

"Renji! You gotta help me! I think Kuchiki-taicho wants me to be his-"

"Yeah...I don't really want to hear how much your Nii-sama is spoiling his new little sister;" Abarai interrupted her, flapping his hand and walking straight past them both. "I can pay for my own cakes at the market these days."

"I wasn't saying that!" exploded Rukia. "You're the one that told me to go with the Kuchikis!"

He turned to her, and his face was the one that had looked at her longingly, apprehensively, all those years ago when their situations had been reversed and it was the funny little kid Renji being offered a home and family. Back then, all of his friends had tried to let him leave, but it was the barest unconscious shake of Rukia's head that had dragged him away from that better life. And they both knew it had taken all his willpower to congratulate her on her new higher station. It was just a different world they lived in now, one with rules and requirements, where people had to be sponsored to get by, and where nobles got their own way.

"If it bothers you that badly," he said, straining to stay casual; "just get a placement in the real world when you graduate. Then you won't have to be near the Kuchiki house."

She folded her arms tightly. "Like they'd ever let me. I can't even take my graduation tests. He wants to fast track me."

"To be fair, a lot of the lessons past this point are redundant," noted Kira. "They only keep students on so long to build up their experience. You two already have plenty of experience with rough situations."

"That's not the point," said Rukia and Renji simultaneously. They avoided each other's eyes awkwardly.

Kira sighed and left them to their sulking.

**o)0(o**

"I would advise you to take up reading to improve your literacy skills and decorum," said Byakuya in a chilly voice after yet another silent dinner. He slid a large scroll towards her across the low table. "This is the Tale of Genji, one of the first major pieces of literature to be written in Japan. It was written by a noblewoman known as Murasaki. It should make an adequate starting point for you."

Rukia balked at the size and antiquity of the manuscript. It looked impossible to read. Clearly nobles had a skewed idea of what a 'starting point' should be. What else could you expect of people that were born at the top?

A week later he passed her room and found her engrossed. There had been no stories in the Red Dog district, and this 'romance' thing had her absolutely hooked. He did, however, find the archaic mannerisms she adopted from her newfound hobby almost as inappropriate as her former wild behaviour.

But as long as she could learn, she would eventually become acceptable to his family's high standards.

**o)0(o**

Over the years it became normal, the separation between them, less apparent. The past was pushed away and left where it belonged, and it was not until the day that steel bars and a death sentence stood between them that Renji and Rukia remembered how strong their bonds truly should be.

With war on the horizon, they began to tug the threads of their own life from the grip of the Gotei Thirteen.

**o)0(o**

"Don't you go putting weird things in my mouth, Abarai," warned Rukia, hands slightly outstretched for balance. He'd blindfolded her, tossed her over his shoulder and flash-stepped them to a secret location – and like a trusting, gullible fool, she'd let him.

"What does this taste like?" She could hear the grin in his voice, and decided it would be safe to open wide. Biting down on the tiny, crunchy sweets, she pulled the blindfold off. Her eyes were glistening with tears.

"It tastes like home..." Staring round at the stately tree, the rundown shack, the old haunts. Their stomping ground. The daydream castle of young thieves. A drop of water fell, she scrubbed it away hastily. "Tastes like crap, but it tastes like home."

"Yeah," agreed Renji easily, leaning against their old tree. "The chef these days isn't so good as the old one."

"Or maybe it's sweeter when it's stolen."

"...I'm pretty sure it's the chef's fault."

"...You stole it, didn't you?"

"For old times' sake?" He grinned, caught red-handed. "Or should I say authenticity?"

"Call yourself a captain!"

Climbing the ancient oak for nostalgia, almost as a safety blanket, Rukia perched in the branches and sighed out several decades' worth of stress.

"That good?" joked Renji, not really surprised when she nodded.

"...The Kuchiki Estate is like living in a museum. Every room is a display cabinet, and I'm forever being judged on my posture and language. It's unbearable. Some days I miss being a street rat so much I wish I could just run back here and be small again."

"What do you mean 'again'?"

She kicked him. He laughed off the sting of her well-aimed foot.

"I know what you mean though," huffed her oldest friend. "Byakuya was almost as bad as my captain. I had to keep trotting out the 'it's Zabimaru's fault I have tattoos' excuse until he gave up."

"Is it?"

Renji refused to comment.

They sat in the old tree by the shack and stared at the wide horizon, where the graves of their friends had been erased by time. The current rushed past, the shushing sound of the river a soothing balm. It took them back to freer days, with few luxuries, yet also no restrictions.

"Do you ever wonder who we'd've been if we never became shinigami?" asked Renji suddenly.

"The same as all the other drunk bums in Rukongai," replied Rukia, distasteful, so high above them now.

"…Only if we could steal enough booze." Renji rolled his neck from side to side, not really happy with her theory. They'd always clung to the child's mindset in Rukongai – not adults that had been sifted to the bottom of the pile, but disadvantaged orphans that hadn't yet learnt to climb to the top. It was a kind of innocence that kept the weekly stealing and scuffling fun rather than jaded and sinful.

They'd been free from labels until they arrived in Seireitei, scruffy and uneducated. No one in Red Dog had cared about them enough to judge them, and the people they robbed had only hurled useless insults at their backs.

Renji had never really known what to make of himself.

He had no family, but the lack of it never showed in him. He had friends, and one best friend who continually wavered in and out of his reach - despite their long history, despite his closeness to her brother, despite their shared rank. Renji was never a genius, though he worked his way to the elite of the Gotei Thirteen nonetheless.

He'd always been playing catch-up, always the butt of the joke, and never really knew what his goal was. Kuchiki-taicho was what he aimed for, but to tell the truth only because Kuchiki-fukutaicho was so much harder to measure. He didn't really fight for Soul Society, because Rukongai kicked him around for far longer than he'd wished as a feral child. He'd bounced around the squads, none of them really fitting his red pineapple style.

In personality he was as much a chimera as his nue zanpakuto. A mythical demon with a monkey's head, tanuki's body, tiger legs and snake tail. Said to bring misfortune, they were regal and carefree and dangerous and tricksters all at once. He picked impossible goals because no one told him he couldn't, but there were no handy defects like Ichigo's. Like everyone else he had to do the legwork, trying to understand Zabimaru who had far more sides than his two mouths would suggest.

God only knew how his squad would turn out with him in charge.

But he'd never thought of himself as one of those hopeless drifters killing time in Red Dog. This had never felt like an afterlife to him, it was his only life. Which was probably why he'd always thought, if they'd never left Rukongai, if Rukia had never taken the high road, if things hadn't always been so oversimplified and overcomplicated between them…

Couldn't they have learnt to be family rather than partners in crime, and lived a real life together?

Now all he had to do was say that out loud.

"I never thought I'd hear you say that out loud," said Rukia slowly, peering at him suspiciously.

"…What?"

"Phew, it was subconscious. Never mind."

"What did I say?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing..."

Renji glared daggers at her. It was clear from her red face that he'd accidentally said what he'd been thinking. "I must've said 'we could have got together a hundred years ago, kids and all'; or something." He said it slowly and deliberately, and Rukia's blush transformed into pure panic.

"Eh? No, no, you were sleep talking, you said something about carrot cake, I barely heard it. And you know Nii-sama would go spare if he heard you say that, and, and besides," she gabbled in her haughtiest, most flustered voice possible; "I came to Soul Society as a baby, you know? I never had a human adult's body with – with hormones, and neither did you! People come here to shuffle off their mortal coil, not have romances! Love is for the living." She shuffled along her branch away from him. "Haven't you noticed how every shinigami that has a relationship ends up dying tragically? I mean, Kaien and his wife, Rangiku and Gin, Masaki, Hisana…come to think of it Ichigo and Orihime both were dead for a bit too…"

Renji narrowed his eyes stubbornly and she gulped.

"I just don't think that we're really…"

"Going to survive this war anyway? Great. You won't have long to regret it."

"But-!"

"I still haven't heard any proper reasons why not like 'I hate you Renji, get out of my face'."

She squirmed guiltily. "I don't hate you."

"I was starting to wonder…"

"Is that why you trapped me in a tree!"

He rolled his eyes; she was more than capable of escaping if she wanted to. "Isn't it in all your crappy novels, that the girl gets whisked away somewhere nostalgic and falls for her best friend?"

She ignored the amusing mental image of Renji scouring her books for advice, and tried to shoot him down. "All this place does is remind me our lives used to be shit."

"Exactly!" shouted Renji; "You've been getting too up yourself and noble and thinking you're better than me!"

"Ohhh, my apologies, Taicho!" yelled back Rukia, wide-eyed and sarcastic. "Let me peel some grapes for you, Taicho! I'm sorry for breathing your hallowed air, Taicho!"

"This is the part where we get magnetically drawn into a passionate kiss, right?" responded the taicho calmly. Wrong-footed, the noble forgot to be angry and burst out laughing. He was quoting some dreadful manga she'd brought back from Karakura.

She steadied herself on the bough of the tree after laughing for a long, long time. "Might- haha! Might as well…" She grinned at him, eyes dancing. "We just won't tell Nii-sama."

They fitted into each other's arms like it was natural, kissed like it wasn't the first time, melded together effortlessly. All thoughts of war and disobedience and class-divides drifted away. Just each other, and the river, and all the time in the world.

The ease was almost uncanny. They were both transfixed by a feeling of déjà vu, but too caught up to say so.

They lost track of how much time had passed, until Abarai jerked away. An ugly sensation of danger was crawling down his spine. "Something seems off," muttered Renji, and Rukia's voice rose in disbelief.

"You spend all that time convincing me and then say it feels off?"

"Not you!" scowled the redhead, placing a hand on Zabimaru. "In general..."

"Oh, your impending doom senses are tingling are they? How very inauspicious. What else would one expect from a nue?" said the pseudo-noble with an angry flick of her short black hair. She was all set to launch into a rant about his bad luck, and wasn't above dragging up incidents from a century or more ago. Like the time when they'd declared themselves legal adults (high reiatsu having slowed their aging much like Hitsugaya's) and stolen someone's moonshine sake to celebrate. Renji's unlucky streak had left them stone cold sober and impressively bruised.

"Can't you sense that?"

Whatever her intended retort, it was drowned out by the spontaneous implosion of a dozen buildings across the river. The din echoed into the sky.

Rukia hit the ground, ducking the shockwave that rolled lazily over the waters and reduced their old house to splinters and dust. She felt the heat travel past, almost glanced to check she hadn't caught fire. Renji had leapt pre-emptively into the sky, Zabimaru already coiling around him. What the hell was going on? He'd seen this coming – why hadn't she?

A blue-white blur flashed past her, and the streets of her earliest memories crumbled to their foundations.

Her head felt hazy. It slowly dawned that, just like her first meeting with Ichigo, a massive reiatsu was hindering her senses. It also occurred to her that, as she'd predicted, the star-crossed lovers were about to die.

**o)0(o**

Grimmjaw Jeagerjacques paused on his rampant trail of destruction, turned, and sauntered back to the small woman. She was reeling from his presence alone. He laughed viciously, to think this ant had once trapped him in a block of ice! She blinked at him blearily, adjusting slowly, trying to scrabble away to gain a few precious seconds.

The Espada had changed. There was no sword at his side, no white shihakusho. He was streamlined, panther-like, armoured in chalk white muscles, his long hair an unnatural shade of blue. His tail was a corded whip, teeth sharp, clashing hungrily.

He crouched beside her, pumping out more and more reiatsu just to see her choke. "Hey, hey, little shinigami... where's your ginger friend who thought he was so much tougher than me? Did you think we wouldn't notice that he was alive again? I know that Inoue girl can mess with reality..." He reached for Rukia's vulnerable throat with the arm Orihime had regenerated at Aizen's command. "If you tell me where he is, I'll put you out of your misery."

"I'm not miserable," growled the Kuchiki, drawing her zanpakuto with a shaking hand. As soon as she could summon Sode no Shirayuki, as soon as she could fight back with a little of her own reiatsu, she would make that monster regret underestimating her.

Vast white fangs snapped together around the arrancar's torso, lifting him bodily into the air and flinging him into the distance with the speed of a whiplash.

Rukia blinked for a second. She had not seen Hihio Zabimaru's approach."Have you been training, Renji?" she called to him. He scratched his head with the embarrassed modesty he showed on rare times he worked hard at something for its own sake, and not to show off. Gone were the serpent's huge, ungainly movements: now it struck like the snake it was, and not like the clumsy baboon of yesteryear.

Grimmjaw flung his arms and legs out wide, whooping madly as his crash landing cut a swathe through the crowded shanty district. It didn't bother him that he'd been injured, or tossed like a rag, or outmanoeuvred. He was only focused on causing as much destruction as possible, even if his own body was the missile.

Skidding to a halt in a deep rut of earth, he crouched to catch his balance and flicked his tail from side to side, a pouncing cat. A cat that toyed with its wriggling prey. Plus souls were snuffing out all around him and despite it being a feast the likes of which he had never seen, Jeagerjacques wasn't focused on his hunger for once; but on the thrill of the hunt itself. His new playthings fought dirty, with a personal grudge against him, and that was simply more entertaining than the chaff that died so effortlessly. He remembered them vaguely from the time Espada Zero slaughtered her brother in the Las Noches arena, but not what he'd done to earn their vicious hatred. Had he punched the redhead a few times too many? Hell knows. But it was still there, this new sensation of fun.

His laughter, bright, breezy and bloody, was unnerving. The Red Dog District was emptying like a plague of rats from a sinking ship, the sound only spurring them on. Far away alarms were being raised. Renji and Rukia ramped up the offensive, slinging kido with her deadly precision and his volatile imprecision. They didn't want reinforcements to become cannon fodder. Hopefully only captains would come, but that was too much to ask in the heart of Soul Society.

The monster zigzagged towards them, dodging fire and gaining ground at every stride, before them in a flash and turning into a hurricane with a ridiculously overpowered spinning kick. The noble blocked with her sword, envisioning her whole spine cracking in half if that lethal force connected, yet nothing did. The coils of Abarai's bankai had already curled around, shielding them both. The jutting spikes were angled outwards, so that the Hollow would impale itself, yet just as many shattered and ricocheted away when he hit them.

"Ten times more powerful," gasped Rukia, letting her guard fall. The gap between shikai and bankai had rarely felt more evident. "You asshole! When am I ever going to get stronger?"

"Any time now would be great," grunted Renji, straining to hold Grimmjaw back. "I don't think I can kill an Espada on my own."

"That's funny, because I did," taunted his small, egotistical friend. "Besides Shirayuki has certain subtleties that are harder to master than Zabimaru's 'monkey see monkey do' approach, you know?"

Renji huffed and kicked her.

She hit the ground with a thump just as one of the arrancar's claws punctured their defences and gashed her collarbone. If she had still been standing her stomach would have been ripped out. Rukia bit her lip rather than let the scream out, and slashed at the white hand with her sword. Acting independently, the zanpakuto's long silver ribbon rose up and wound around Grimmjaw's arm, freezing on contact and constricting hard.

Both shinigami stared at this new attack breathlessly.

"...I think Sode no Shirayuki is making up for lost time?" panted Abarai.

His colleague nodded mournfully. "She blames Nii-sama for my stunted growth."

"Your growth was stunted way before you met Bya- OW!" An elbow to his shin prevented the redhead from finishing his sentence.

Beyond the beige wall of the zanpakuto's body, Grimmjaw had begun to roar in pain. His head snapped from side to side as he tried to wrench his arm free from Shirayuki's icy grip. His howl formed shockwaves, bouncing from Zabimaru's fraying coils and churning the ground up.

Renji winced, the sound made their heads ring nauseously; they knew Jeagerjacques wasn't even the strongest of his kind. "We need back up."

"Your ability to state the obvious has really improved over the years!" Rukia snapped, attempting to summon a messenger butterfly one-handed whilst her sword sapped at her strength.

"_DESGARRON!"_

Pillars of sky blue energy lacerated Zabimaru's body, decimating it, segments whistling away in all directions. Barrier crumbling, the pair stared at their abandoned playground, now nothing more than the debris of war. The earth had been ploughed by the Hollow's claws, mud steaming, river diverting into the chasms crisscrossing its banks. The shanty town all around had been flattened by Grimmjaw's roars. The air was thick with the stench of burning and death.

The Rukongai thieves felt white-hot fury flowing within their veins. This was their territory. How dare a Hollow, a soulless shadow with no place in the world come here and destroy their home?

Shirayuki's ribbon had been severed and hung limp from the sword's hilt. Its remaining length was still twined about their enemy's arm, a literal sleeve of snow. Rukia looked at it and raised her arms, eyes hard.

"Blue fire, crash down!"

Grimmjaw's arm, frozen to the core, was engulfed in flames - hissed, crackled, and shattered into a hundred chunks of bone and thawing meat.

"_Again?_" snarled the panther king, clenching his remaining fist. "You shinigamis are so fucking arrogant!"

"It's just that you're worthless," spat Renji, his bankai in shreds and his pride flaring.

"You're no less dead than me," the arrancar leaned in close, sparking with rage; "and you have no more rights." His body was heaving, the black hole through his abdomen shaking in time to his raw breathing. A Gran Rey Cero nestled in his claws, electric blue, dense and deadly.

No time to run.

**o)0(o**

Kotetsu Isane, captain of the newly medical Fifth Division, saw the explosion streaking upwards and guiding her path to the scene of battle. Beside her the Ninth captain, Ashido Kano, loudly cursed every Hollow under the black sky of Las Noches and secured one of their masks over his face.

The Cero barely seemed real, so all-encompassing it obliterated half the Red Dog district, insubstantial blue strobe lighting against a azure sky. The sound echoed for miles. They both shuddered. A Cero might damage little in Hueco Mundo's desert, but it devastated cities. In their minds Abarai Renji and Kuchiki Rukia were already dead.

Ashido only ran faster. Rukia had brought him back to his home. He refused to let her fall un-avenged.

Yet the closer they got, the stronger a strange red flickering became. The ace up Renji's sleeve, that whenever Zabimaru seemed broken it had only shed its skin, playing dead. Scattered links of the snake's body had flown back together again, rather than stabbing the opponent this time reforming the barricade around its master and his partner.

Something made all four soul reapers look up. Looming over the Espada was a ghostly being, an enormous thundercloud stooping to the ground.

Zabimaru.

The nue, barely materialised, lifted a tiger-striped paw and trapped the arrancar beneath, snuffing the last lights of the Cero. Its stern red baboon face bared teeth and barked unnervingly, the dog that usually cursed the moon turning its ire on a closer adversary. Thick albino fur on its tanuki body prickled, making the zanpakuto spirit appear ever larger. Its tail was Renji's bankai, a huge skeletal serpent with a vivid scarlet mane.

A final form that would take a hundred years for Abarai to attain.

The translucent chimera lifted its crimson face and howled a warning. In a flash of lightning it vanished; leaving only twisted chunks of metal behind, Renji's blade truly smashed.

The man crumpled. His red hair had come loose and spilled over his face as Rukia leapt to support him.

"Renji! _Renji!_"

He had overstepped the limits of his reiatsu, and now his body paid the price.

**o)0(o**

_**Bloomake!**_

_Shinigami Cup!_

**o)0(o**

Grimmjaw: You think you're above me? You're no less dead than I am! I'm just hungrier than you could ever understand.  
Rukia: Now that you mention it, no food grows in Hueco Mundo does it? *pulls a juice box from emergency rations* Try this.  
G: How do you open it?  
R: It takes skill, I admit. *pops straw in*  
G: Hm. That is nice. Better than raw soul. What else you got?  
R: *glances between Renji and limited edition Chappy chocolate bar a few times* ...You can eat Renji.

**o)0(o**

_**Author Note:**__ First off I need to apologise for the four-month absence. You would think the summer holiday would be the perfect time to finish HB for good. As it turned out, I was at work nearly every day, sometimes for 26 hour shifts; and when I was home there were guests staying. So. My intentions to finish this bloody thing by August died, and now I'm back at university. On a brighter note, I have been told to write for at least two hours every day by my Creative Writing teacher, so hopefully you will see regular updates for the first time!_

_To everyone that still reads this, thank you, and I really appreciate your feedback. Xxx_

_P.S. Homura and Shizuku mentioned at the beginning are Rukia's long lost friends from the Fade to Black film. She named them._

_P.P.S. Ashido and Isane are back! :D_


	40. Winter War

**Hell Butterfly**

**Winter War**

**~40~**

**o)0(o**

Isane threw herself to the ground beside Renji and began drip feeding him her reiatsu without even greeting Rukia. Those with the energy to speak usually had fewer problems than the silently wounded. The smaller woman was standing guard and bellowing threats at the fallen arrancar.

Only when Abarai's dangerously shallow breathing deepened did she turn to the other.

"Rukia! You're bleeding!" she called out.

The shinigami glanced down to the wide gash travelling over her shoulder and across her collarbone. Red blood was spreading in a large patch across her ripped shihakusho. "Ow. _OW!_ Holy shit that hurts!" She hadn't realised how bad it was before, high on adrenaline. "Tsugi no Mai!"

Snow exploded forth from thin air, and with the enemy encased inside a glacier; she collapsed to her knees beside the healer and looked pitiful. "Help me out, Kotetsu-taicho?" asked the fighter plaintively.

Without pausing the first kido, Isane started tending to her second patient. Mere metres away the ice was loudly cracking and shifting. Grimmjaw was recovering fast.

"Isane-san, if you need to fight, I know enough kido to heal myself..." offered Rukia, watching the Hollow like a paranoid hawk.

"That's not necessary, Rukia-san," the healer absently murmured. She pulled her zanpakuto out without looking.

"_Hashire, Itegumo." Run, Frozen Cloud._ It turned into a three-pronged rapier.

"Are you sure you can do three things at once?" stuttered the Kuchiki.

"Healing kido are designed to be chained together," explained the captain. "Hinamori can string dozens, you know, we wanted her in Fourth since we found her. But this is just to create a barrier between my patients and the battlefield. If that Espada can break through, though, we'll be in trouble."

"Why's that?" said Rukia suspiciously.

"_Fly, Frozen Clouds;_" said Isane solemnly, and flung her sword straight up into the sky. It whistled up like an arrow, travelling far further than any human should be able to throw.

"Now what?" squawked Rukia, waving Shirayuki in her uninjured hand. Blood loss wasn't helping her think straight. "Why would you do that? We're done for!"

Isane shrugged semi-apologetically. "Well this is why I never fought much," she laughed as the blue sky darkened over. "My shikai is very sharp, but I'm not a natural swordsman…and then the other is a little impractical." She coughed. "Ano… BANKAI!"

The heavens opened, a hailstorm pelted down; drilling holes in the earth with every icy stone, an avalanche so dense none could stand against it. Yet around Isane was a calm haven; hailstones rebounding from some invisible cloak above her lilac head.

"…Wow…" croaked Rukia. "Isane-taicho, I never knew you were an ice-type too." She could see nothing through the stinging grey haze.

The woman simply shrugged again, her depths as always hidden like an iceberg. Over the years she had assumed Unohana's mantle of veiled power without even noticing. "Few do."

**o)0(o**

Mutilated, downtrodden, pissed off and left to die in the cold; Grimmjaw Jeagerjacques had gone way past anger. There was a white-hot sphere of vengeance burning in the hole through his abdomen, and the little white bullets pinging off his battered muscles were only making him madder.

Rukia's river of ice had been eroded by his reiatsu already; he heaved himself out of the crater left by Zabimaru's fist and felt his bones creak. More than one rib was broken. Spitting out a mouthful of stale blood, he crouched on his haunches for a moment.

A shadow fell over him and he glared up at the caster. A bare skull stared at him through empty eye sockets, some mask ripped from an Adjuchas whilst it still lived, a face stolen by a reaper who shambled around in the hides of those he hunted. A sheep in wolf's clothing, were it not for the hidden fangs.

"I remember you, always sneaking around in the Menos no Mori," growled the Espada, not moving, not yet. "You've been there fuckin' longer than I have. Some goddamn horror story for monsters, you are."

The silent killer raised its blade, to all appearances like another arrancar or vaizard.

"You call yourselves gods, but you kick us when we're down and kill us from behind like cowards!" shouted Grimmjaw, heckling his nemesis.

"Honour is a luxury. How could a Minus speak of such things?" The apparition struck, the demon countered, furious.

"I still have pride!"

"If you had any pride you would desire to be purified," replied the faceless voice, so dry, so calm, so accustomed to the slaughter of Hollows. For the denizens of Hueco Mundo may have known Ashido Kano existed, yet they had never seen his face. He was an urban legend between the few who could refrain from killing each other long enough for conversation. He had been called a deluded Hollow, a shinigami that had lost its heart but refused to admit it, an arrancar that stole the masks of others after his own face had crumbled to dust. A lost child who had turned against the desert that raised him. A death god so bloodthirsty he could never be sated, and massacred Hollows without cease as if he were one. Kano had believed many of these stories himself, as the centuries of solitude lead his sanity to ebb and flow without pattern or reason. "You are an aberration of nature."

"_You do not dictate who I am, shinigami!_" roared the Sexta Espada, and lunged.

**o)0(o**

In the perfect dark of a Garganta, a Hollow can walk unaided. He has no need of the light bridges shinigamis build to navigate the black. He reaches out a pale hand that he cannot see for shadows, and pierces the veil of night. A thread of light appears; dimensions tear as easily as paper bags, and the world bubbles back into existence.

The sun is high and bright, the blue sky real and not the backdrop to a castle of ghosts. The gates of the Garganta slither fully open. He stands at a plaza in the depths of the shinigami stronghold, the Court of Pure Souls. Cobbles pave the ground, bricks march along each others' backs in walls, tiles slant in neat rows. Mud has been gathered and segmented and baked and rearranged, as if piling it in a different fashion will make it cease to be mud. They likely call it art.

There is no art in Hueco Mundo. There is no lie about the sickening state of reality. But his materialistic eyes witness no truth here, only pretence. He probes the maze walls and they crumble; towers of sand - this entire city nothing more than Yamamoto's dollhouse, his game of society, his metaphor of the real world.

The Reapers eat and drink and starve, unlike the simple plus souls that they segregate into Rukongai. Surely they are hung up on their past lives. Surely they suffer, to be forced to rely on mortal means in the afterlife. Surely they remain in denial, that their hunger is any different to that of Hollows.

Two of them gape at him in abject horror. Both trash. There is as little profit in killing them as in chasing a fly. The moment he steps from his portal, they will be crushed by his inert reiatsu alone.

"_What are we going to do, Ayasegawa-san?"_

"_Well you, Hanatarou, are going to die when he pours out reiatsu and the pressure of it makes your brain liquefy and leak out your ears. It'll be a truly ugly death that I really don't wish to be associated with. As for me, I'm going to call for back up. Moshi moshi, Tech Squad? We're being invaded by an Espada… I don't know, it's the pale, green-eyed emo one. Uh huh. Send my taicho over would you? He'd hate me if I hogged all the decent adversaries…what do you mean his phone is off? That's-! Then send anyone! The arrancar has a face like a depressed pug dog; I don't want to fight him!"_

Ulquiorra Schiffer crosses the boundary into their world, Soul Society, and watches them both fold in half. The shorter, scrawny one is soon retching for breath on the floor, the taller one with pointless feathery adornments on his face manages to remain kneeling. His face contorts as he unsheathes his zanpakuto.

"_When your head explodes, don't get any of the goop on me, okay?"_

"_I-I-I… Yumichika-san! You're being too harsh… I'm… ugh…going to take one of Fourth Division's ultra special medical stamina energy pills… I'm sure I can diagnose if my head will explode."_

"_What the? Everyone knows they don't work! You could eat all the ones you have and it'd be-"_

"_Ano…I feel better now…but you're right, Ayasegawa-san, I will take them all just in case. Itedakimaaasu…"_

"_Wait, wait. Save one for me."_

Ulquiorra senses other Gargantas flickering open and closing in the far distance, can locate Grimmjaw, Hallibel, Starrk, Nel and Barragan without resorting to Pesquisa. The shinigamis crawling all over and throughout their city of clay like black ants have yet to realise that the Winter War is upon them, that the Espada have arrived early before the first snowflake could fall.

He begins to walk towards the inner courts, the First Division offices and Central 46 complexes. Tempted by more succulent prey.

"Hey. Don't just saunter past and ignore an opponent!"

Ulquiorra fixes the combat-happy yob with a look that says, quite plainly and without the need to open his mouth, that the man is utter trash. Yumichika gulps and keeps up his bravado.

"I may look like a butterfly, but I sting like a killer bee. Don't judge a book by its cover. Try me!"

"_Ayasegawa-san, you're surprisingly open-minded!"_

"_Shut up Hanatarou, it's not including you. You're just as pathetic as you look. Bloom, Fuji Kujaku, Wisteria Peacock!"_

It occurrs to Schiffer then, as the more colourful trash hikes in power ever so slightly, that there is also no logic in tolerating flies. The taller reaper now holds a five bladed sickle and the assumption that his blunt claws could harm an Espada. The shorter roots through his bag of medical tricks as if any would make a difference to their survival.

Turning his back on them, the arrancar draws his own zanpakuto with a practised flick. His movements are efficient and mechanical. It is the work of but a second to cut the pair into corpses – yet he regards this extension of himself, this blade Murciélago, and finds himself loathe to sully it with their worthless blood. Instead he speaks to it.

"Enclose, Murciélago…"

A shroud of green-trimmed black, like living ink, wraps around him, expanding and then shrinking into two curving black bat-wings, an unbroken helm crowning his wayward dark hair, his robes clinging closer like a second skin. As his older, familiar form is released a denser wave of reiatsu washes over his opponents, they are mere tadpoles in the pond of his aura. Looking over his shoulder, he watches them struggle for a moment. It has become an experiment, a game rather than an irritation. With an expression of cold fascination he raises the stakes. There is no longer any need to restrain himself now the war has begun.

His mouth opens, a schadenfreude smile skirts its edges but does not appear. "Resurreción, Segunda Etapa."

Pitch black tar pours from his Hollow, flooding outwards, now the shinigami are mere weeds drowning in his ocean, and more souls beyond the plaza are sucked in and extinguished alongside. He has a theory that this entire world could be ground down to colourless sand, and the time has come to test his hypothesis.

There are few screams as hundreds of reapers choke upon his power and suffocate. There is a death rattle from the one who foolishly challenged him. A name the man is calling out in regret, perhaps.

"_Ruri'iro Kujaku!" Azure Peacock!_

_The shadows in the plaza are pierced by vines of vivacious green light, ivy tumbles and coils and spreads all over, budding leaves and flowers of emerald, drinking up the shades in an abnormal perversion of photosynthesis. They creep and swell and grow, crawling closer and closer, voracious plants. A proof that life is as inevitable as death._

"Zaraki-taicho hates this kinda shit, you know," gasps Yumichika, lungs heaving. He looks flustered and graceless. He sneers. "These kind of tricks that have nothing to do raw strength. I thought I'd rather die than rely on Kujaku's cheating little techniques, but I guess I lied. …At least no one will see my shame."

"This is amazing, Ayasegawa-san!"

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!"

"The Medical Squad has many ways to boost low reiatsu in weakened patients, Ayase-"

"IF YOU TELL _ANYONE ABOUT THIS,_ YOU _WILL _BE DEAD, UNDERSTAND?"

"A-a-a-a-ano, I didn't see anything, I swear!"

Ulquiorra widened his eyes in slight surprise. So the trash had a special ability which allowed him drain spiritual energy? The Espada could barely feel its effects, thus far the human had only stolen his passive reiatsu and been hard pushed just to do that. Were there limits? Was it only a matter of time or had the glowing fronds already sapped their fill?

"My Ruri'iro Kujaku can suck all the life out of a person until they die," bragged Yumichika, preening the feathers by his eye with his fingertips. "And that's not all." He reached out to one of the flowers blooming upon a lush plant. "I can take your power for myself and use it against you."

He crushed the petals in his palm, and a rush of energy re-tuned to his wavelength shot through him.

"HAHAHHAHAAAAA… HAHAHAHAHAaa… haa…oh…oh god… What have I been doing with my life? With my afterlife? I have all this power and potential and I'm only using it for destruction… I could have been creating beautiful things – I've been lying to myself! I've been lying about my zanpakuto for decades! I'm worthless trash! I – I – I'm not _colour-coordinated! Purple and orange clash, why did I never realise?_"

Hanatarou watched in naked disbelief and bewilderment as Yumichika slowly sank to his knees and curled into a small ball, rocking back and forth upon the scratched cobblestones. His face was a sickly shade of pale. "I know I started out wearing these vile colour combinations to piss off Kujaku and stay in Eleventh Squad, but when did I start thinking they looked good? I've been a laughing stock all this time. My life has no value. I feel so _depressed_. My existence has been empty all along… Empty...empty…empty…empty…"

The strange symptoms were undoubtedly triggered by the arrancar's crushingly gloomy energy. Curious, Yamada Hanatarou stretched up and plucked a bud from Ayasegawa's elegant zanpakuto. Reiatsu flowed into him, revitalising. He felt a little more melancholy, yes, but not vastly different to usual. "What's the matter, Ayasegawa-san? Are you hurt somehow? It isn't doing anything to me…"

"Of course not!" wailed Yumichika, throwing a tantrum. "You're naturally depressed! You were born miserable! But _I'm_ not meant to be this way! I'm supposed to be _beautiful_ but it was all a_lie_…_hick_… This is so _unfair_… _Waaa_…"

Ulquiorra generated a needle of reiryoku in one hand, a splinter from a Luz de la Luna energy javelin. A full sized one in these tight confines would only impede him, but a condensed one was more than adequate. It only took a pin to stab an insect after all.

He flicked it with careless fingers, and the shinigami's tiresome complaints were abruptly silenced.

**o)0(o**

Starrk wandered out of a Garganta with Lilynette close behind, and stood in thin air, peering through the windows of the Shrine of Penitence. It was damaged, scarred and dusty, but empty. Whistling aimlessly, he glanced around in hopes that the area he was invading would remain this deserted.

"I might have a nap, Lilynette," yawned the Primera Espada behind a gloved hand. His Fraccion tapped his shoulder. He turned.

"Yo!" grinned Zaraki, a shark-grin pasted across his scarred face, and punched the arrancar into the ground…

…two hundred feet down.

**o)0(o**

Flashes of brilliant colour and fountains of hot sparks flickered between the hailstones, Kajouhi whirling and burning in her master's hands. Ashido wielded his zanpakuto with centuries of experience alongside reckless abandon. He had almost never used shikai in the Menos no Mori, it would have led the Hollows to him like a plague of bloodhounds. The bankai had been once, two hundred years into his sentence there, and although he knew the capability was there he had never dared release it again.

But now he was free in a million different ways, allowed to show off and strike without caution, and sing a battle-hymn in praise of the zanpakuto spirit that had protected him all along.

The Hollow Jeagerjacques seemed to be picking up on his thrill in the fight, matching him stride for stride and blow for blow even with one arm missing, darting and spinning and lashing out with a strangely wild precision.

They clashed like bloodthirsty dancers, full of movement and exhilaration. Grimmjaw was a white jaguar, stalking and pouncing and toying with his antelope prey. Kano was a firework, explosive and vivid and belying his blank masks and battered faun-coloured hide.

Cobalt-blue Bala attacks came in volleys, neither allowing the other enough pause to generate a Cero or bankai. They moved beneath the tumbling ice almost as if it wasn't there, the healer and her charges could barely see them; but they felt them, the bursts of reiatsu pounding through them like bass music.

Then the darker aura broke away and came straight for them, moving at breakneck speed. Kotetsu Isane was defenceless and tied up in kido, Rukia still held Sode no Shirayuki but the wound had been more serious than she'd realised in the heat of the moment. Renji was still comatose, taken far beyond his limits and left there abandoned.

The hailstorm fell thickest at its centre, already piled in dunes around the three, an impenetrable curtain around them. The noble held her breath unconsciously.

Her eyes were full of white and green and blue, a fragmented close up, his long teeth and long hair and long torment brushing against her skin as he broke through the storm so fast that she reacted long after he had already stopped. Her mind pinwheeled - everything happened too fast all at once.

The panther had jerked to a halt just short of maiming her, something dark and angular looped round his neck like the crook used to drag people offstage. He hissed, and swore, she saw the pink of his tongue that might have tasted her raw meat. He bulled forwards, twice, thrice more, restrained every time. His head started sinking; a cat caught in a snare and forced to lie upon the ground in case it choked.

"You are now sixteen…" Grimmjaw continued to kick and struggle, "…thirty-two…sixty-four… Now a hundred and twenty-eight times your natural weight." The hooked blade of Wabisuke was beginning to slit a red line across his throat. "I'm surprised you can still move."

"You think I'll be bothered by _weight?_" laughed the Espada incredulously. Raising an arm that was now equivalent to several tons, he fired the darts embedded in his elbow at the lieutenant, blasting him away.

"Kira!" shouted Rukia, preparing to use her First Dance. She hadn't even seen her old friend's arrival, guided through the storm by Kotetsu-taicho. But now she could see Jeagerjacques's movements. He might brag, but he had been slowed.

The Hollow unhooked the sword from round his neck, though touching it barehanded made him two hundred and fifty-six times heavier than he should be. He hadn't felt this heavy in a long time, not since chains had dragged him down to earth so badly that his heart ripped out and turned hollow, and that a hundred thousand times over, a haunting memory that was strengthened by every other soul he devoured.

He had known heaviness, he had dealt with being slow and shackled and bound as a fading spirit, he had known the burden of a mask and he had triumphed over all of it to become unstoppable.

"Don't you know how heavy this hole through me is?" asked the Espada, gesturing at his absent stomach with his remaining hand. "I already know how to carry these loads." His fingers began to glow, about to slash at the enemies all around with his Desgarron claws.

The hailstorm vanished without warning, Itegumo returned to Isane's hand, slender and surgically sharp.

"Why even bother breaking your mask if it does nothing to heal your soul?" spat the woman, shaking in anger. Her specialism had kept her mostly far from the frontlines, violence was rare for her. But that in no way meant she couldn't dish it out.

Grimmjaw Jeagerjacques stared at her, fixated. "I took off my mask because I forgot who the face beneath was! So that you'd know who was killing you. So _I_ would know who was killing you. There are plenty of other organs in the body, so why does losing just one turn me into _this?"_

"This isn't the real world," replied the captain in hard tones. "Any form of the soul is just a state of mind. You made yourself this way."

"If my heart beat on its own when I was still alive, then it crawled out of its own accord after I died. What spineless little shit would give up over some crap like that?"

A firework pierced his heart from behind, spitting flames and gunpowder. It charred his insides but the effect was numbed by the arrancar's dense spirit, fattened on a diet of countless other souls. The jaguar sighed, languid.

"You rude bastard." He tilted to meet the face of his Brutus, voluntarily twisting the blade in his back. "You really think you can kill me without bankai? Show some fucking respect!"

"Respect? You?" The voice scratched against the mask obscuring Ashido's stern features. "I know _exactly_ who ends up in Hueco Mundo, I lived there longer than you ever did. The weak. Souls so self-centred, twisted and fragile that they didn't even notice their own hearts crawling away. I might pity the ones that simply became lost, the abused children, the ones whose lives destroyed them…but I will never respect a single Hollow. Not one of you deserves to see the full glory of Kajouhi's bankai."

Grimmjaw snarled like a tiger, pushed against the burning blade that had spitted him, shrieked in violent outrage. Another Cero vomited forth from his mouth as he twisted painfully; it struck Ashido Kano at point blank range, drowning the shinigami in a surge of hot plasma, charring his hands and fur cloak and disintegrating his precious mask.

But the man had spent half a century seeking the tools to repel a Cero, and though the Espada's strength finally broke them, it did not kill the warrior.

The myths of Ashido turned to dust, leaving only the man Kano behind. His dark red hair was drenched in sweat, breathing haggard, grey eyes screwed tight in pain. His shihakusho had ripped to shreds and left the more-scars-than-skin torso exposed.

Rukia and Kira caught their breaths, Isane only winced slightly; she had already tried to heal the ingrained damage but it took months to salvage scar tissue.

The arrancar paid him no attention, it was sniffing the air, and despite being skewered, weighted down, crushed and frozen and dismembered, it could still find a malicious smile. "Ulquiorra's vanished. Three captains and two lieutenants and I'm still kicking, but he gives up after nothing? Knew the bastard was weaker than me." The panther laughed, guttural and low.

Another laugh joined his, as if it had triggered another descent into insanity for Ashido. His barriers against and souvenirs of Hueco Mundo had been torn away, his identity cut away like a skinned animal. Like a Hollow, he barely knew who the person beneath the mask was, and with it gone there was nothing to cling to, no duty, no recognition of this city or arrancar or these fallen strangers surrounding him. There was only the constant, almost sacred weight of Kajouhi in his hand. She crooned to him, eager to be freed from countless years of hiding.

_Let me out, let me dance, let me burn, let me fly, let me go…_

Kano's scorched hands tightened on the hilt, his grin mad and frightening. They would never be free of Hueco Mundo; he was tired of restraining himself. Perhaps it was time to go out with a bang.

"You're going to die like a coward, killed from behind and your true face never seen, the way every shinigami should kill every Hollow… Dishonourable, worthless destruction… But it'll be glorious."

"Nothing in this pit is glorious," replied the Sexta Espada, Grimmjaw Jeagerjacques: rebellious and fierce and proud, bright blue eyes wide open. "Except when it falls apart."

"_**BANKAI!**_"

Kajouhi blazed golden, showering golden embers across the churned ground that bounced and collided and rebounded and never faded. She began to grow, scything through the arrancar like a white-hot circular saw. The fires swelled to huge proportions, streamers of flame arcing away in all directions. The spiral galaxy whirled dizzyingly, all the constellations had fallen from the night sky and crashed down to earth…

The Hollow had been incinerated a long time ago; Kano just watched the display in awe.

Kajouhi was dancing and singing, as they both exulted in the colourful radiance and flaunted the kaleidoscopes hidden within their forcibly muted, secretive souls.

For the first time they felt truly home.

Patterns rippled and dissipated throughout the fireworks, shimmering veils of inferno like a nest of writhing dragons. The firecracker ricochets of noise woke even Renji, until all the fighters made a silent audience to the glorious chaotic lights.

Isane picked a path through the deadly glitters, reached out towards Ashido and took his raw, blackened hands gently into her own. He barely registered the pain, entranced by the vibrant sky. She began to heal them, the soft green glow of her reiatsu drowned out by Kajouhi's lights. Her eyes kept wandering from their task to the distracting beauty.

"Hey," he caught her attention, his grey eyes calm and refreshed and reflecting a million candles. He looked sane, belying his wretched physical state. She was so tall she only had to glance up slightly. "I…"

"I know," she smiled, and rested her head briefly on his trembling shoulder. "But there are a lot of people that need me to patch them up before we can get distracted, okay?"

"You're the realest thing I know."

"Ah…um…well you're the only person crazy enough to think my weird nightmares make sense so…aha…" The medic turned pink and tried to focus on his burned hands rather than his very intense stare. A short distance away, Rukia was trying to haul Renji up without reopening her new victory wound. She had asked Isane to leave a scar in memorandum; just in case they ever survived long enough to forget about this day when her love was requited, her enemy defeated, and her childhood home decimated.

"I killed Grimmjaw, right?" asked her partner in crime, battle and life blearily. "You know Byakuya nor Ichigo's killed one o' them…so I win right?"

"Yes, yes," lied Rukia reassuringly. "You can be in my exclusive Espada-killing club, alright?"

"How many more are there?"

She swallowed nervously. Various spots on the horizon were broadcasting warped and massive reiatsus, no clearer declaration of war was necessary. Just one had wiped out an entire district and required five officers to defeat it.

"I can sense six more."

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

Ikkaku: So you survived huh?

Hanatarou: Yes! Yumichika-san saved me! It turns out he has a kido type zanpakuto...oops...I wasn't meant to say that...

Yumichika: GRRRRRRRRR

Zaraki: Eh, it's alright Yumichika. We always knew you were a woopsie.

**o)0(o**


	41. Fractured Lives

**Hell Butterfly**

**Fractured Lives**

**~41~**

**o)0(o**

The lance of pain was quickly followed by a second, and Yumichika convulsed upon the point of his comrade's sword. His head jerked back and cracked against the floor where he had fallen, and as if magnetised Hisagomaru continued to dig into his bleeding chest. His lungs felt like they were on fire, he couldn't draw breath, at least one lung had collapsed.

Hanatarou's zanpakuto, Hisagomaru, still hunted after the shard of Ulquiorra's power buried deep in Ayasegawa's torso, still flaying the man from the inside out. The sword moved of its own volition, and the wielder only clung frantically on to the hilt, praying he wasn't causing more damage than he rectified. Because although Hisagomaru was a shockingly rare healing sword, on a par with Unohana's Minazuki for abnormality, Hanatarou had never quite understood why. It wasn't the gore that worried him, he was well used to stitching wounds; nor was it the strange paradox of stabbing a dying person.

Hanatarou had never quite understood Hisagomaru's nature. Was it a sage healer, performing necessary evils for the sake of greater goods? Or was it a bloodthirsty vampire, a gourd that wished to fill its empty core with pain, and the healing only a side effect as it siphoned up the damage? He had never dared ask, timid towards even himself. And Hisagomaru had never offered the information. But the glowing red gauge on the side of the blade was filling, a syringe drawing blood; and as the sharp edge pursued and devoured the source of Yumichika's pain, the fallen reaper's flesh was reforming with the hiss of crimson smoke.

Withdrawing with a slippery noise, the last stains of fluid and tissue on the sword evaporated. Yumichika's bare skin was flawless, his breathing unlaboured, and the look on his face unfathomable.

"Are you okay, Ayasegawa-san?" peeped Hanatarou, his zanpakuto quivering in his small hands.

Yumichika shrugged and hoisted himself back up. He checked his feathers and fixed his hair. "I've been prettier..."

Across the courtyard, Ulquiorra studied them both with the barest hint of interest. He could see the correlation between the wound, the zanpakuto, and the gauge clearly, could hypothesise what would happen when the scarlet meter was filled, but could not guess why a shinigami would choose to have such a charmless, defenceless power.

No matter. Enough seconds of his time had already been eaten up by these two worthless nobodies. He began to walk, black wings and the tufted whip-like tail swishing behind. He walked straight up to and straight past the enemies, flicking the gaudy one from his path with a careless back-handed swipe, and ignoring the weak, small one entirely. The weak one had no one left to heal, and could not unleash his stored potential without feeding the meter on his sword to bursting point. The truth of defeat was plainly visible in his eyes.

Body turning to jelly as the fully resurrected Espada stalked past, weight of reiatsu like treacle obstructing his thoughts and movements, Hanatarou tried desperately to think of something, anything he could do. Any way to slow the arrancar's passage, some way to sacrifice himself in the name of at least wounding it, yet even as his mind raced he knew it was simply not in his nature. His soul was not wired to hurt others, unless the equivalent healing had already been undertaken in payment. Hisagomaru was almost three quarters full, still, it would take time he couldn't afford to fill the gourd the rest of the way via self-harm. A rather unsavoury tactic that the zanpakuto had already informed him it despised and forbade. Ridiculously, his mind was only offering memories of cake and Karakura as he struggled to think...because of course the only time Hisagomaru had drunk his fill quickly had been the day they helped a chef's ghost find peace.

The Plus soul had been tethered to a bakery, filled with regret at his mother's rejection of his cake business, wanting nothing more than to give her one morsel of his life's work. However a recurring heart condition, his cause of death, had then triggered the chef's fall into a Hollow form. Hanatarou had tried to heal him even as the degradation took hold...and it had worked. The process had reversed. But more importantly Hisagomaru had absorbed enough damage to severely wound a Gillian in a geyser of red light.

Ulquiorra Schiffer was gliding past him, would be out of reach in milliseconds. Fighting the lethargy with all his meagre strength, Yamada Hanatarou managed to just about swing his zanpakuto up to chest height. The Espada did not brush it aside, allowing the blade to scrape against his white skin without cutting it or slowing his stride. The medic gulped for air, drowning in the dark aura, sinking to his knees yet again so hopelessly.

For a moment, Hisagomaru brushed the weeping black hole through Ulquiorra's sternum, and tasted the densest, sweetest trauma and pain it had ever known. The zanpakuto lurched forth, slicing through the empty gap, straight out the other side even as its master began to faint. A fat plume of oily crimson smoke bloomed, expanding, obscuring them all. The red line shone through the dim mist like a beacon, resplendent light, a ravenous cursed blade latching onto its perfect victim.

Ulquiorra frowned, or rather frowned more deeply. They were so depressingly repetitive, these shinigami; now the smaller had learnt the taller's trick, and was trying to steal his energy again. It was logical, that inferior beings would covet the reiatsu of superior Hollows, but must they all keep nibbling at him? He grasped the sword's blade, tried to yank it out of his hollow, but it bit him with a flash of bloody light, flinging his hand aside. The reservoir instantly refilled, but now the zanpakuto was shrinking, the Seventh Seat almost fumbled and dropped it.

"A...Akeiro Hisagomaru..." mumbled Hanatarou, gulping down the last energy-boosting pill that Yumichika had wanted. He was fully aware he couldn't stay alive, let alone conscious, for much longer. Hisagomaru had transformed into a tiny scalpel - useless. It seemed he truly was going to be sacrificed, and martyrdom loomed over him in the form of a dark-winged demon.

Red Gourd. Ulquiorra sneered mentally in distaste. They were even imitating each other's colour-change release commands. Trash.

He felt the tiny incision made where his heart no longer rested.

He stumbled, thrashed his wings for balance, confused. Nothing here could throw him off.

He felt all of his reiatsu begin to twist and contort, forming a whirlpool around his hollow, pouring out through that miniscule slit like water swirling down a drain, helpless against gravity.

The medic stared in panic at the monochrome Espada a hairsbreadth away, as the scalpel in his clammy grip grew denser and heavier. Ulquiorra's emerald eyes were twisted with hatred, but he was too disorientated to attack. It was a new experience for the arrancar, and it had no idea how to react, unsettlingly vulnerable.

And Akeiro Hisagomaru drank, and drank, and drank; it drank like a leech after a drought, like a monster imbibing its prey, like Tiddalik the frog consuming all the waters in the world until the ruby smoke was completely opaque.

Schiffer's logical reasoning fell apart, and instinct took over. The base reflexes of a Hollow, everything he had tried to deny with science and materialism. If hearts were mere circulatory pumps then he had lost nothing, if all the universe was randomly colliding atoms then his existence was equal to anyone else's. If grinding the world to dust could not reveal a single grain of morality, then he was doing nothing wrong.

As his essence was consumed, he threw those ideals away and fought for his survival. A white fist became blood-soaked as it tore the shinigami's arm from its socket, green eyes flashed with jealous panic, he did not want to be the one who was trash, he wanted his superiority back. His mouth screeched, bat-like, as a messy Gran Rey Cero lit his body in emerald flames – every beat of his leathery black wings sent a wave of fire over the enemy.

Hanatarou fell, silently, a small heap of black fabric abandoned on the cracked cobblestones. His consciousness fled the pain, hiding in a dark corner of nowhere for a while it couldn't measure. He knew nothing, was nothing, felt no burning skin or sundered limbs.

**o)0(o**

A voice called to him in the quiet, and he was startled to remember he existed.

_Hanatarou._

He looked askance at the dark, wordless questioning.

_Open your eyes, and depress the plunger._

The young man frowned. The disembodied voice must be terribly confused. The words meant nothing, nonsensical ramblings.

_Hanatarou!_

Familiar though.

_Wake up!_

It sounded like Hisa-chan…his zanpakuto…

_Please don't sleep through this…_

His eyes cracked open, pain and blurry images crowded into his place of peace. The smell of his own charred flesh made him retch, his head felt clouded and prickly as it attempted to block out his injuries.

_Push the button, Hanatarou. It's all you have to do. I've prepared everything for you._

There was some strange shape before him, a shining structure of glass and silver and black steel that trembled with pent up energy and gleamed with a hypnotic red glow.

A black disc inlaid in silver with the six characters for 'flowing red gourd' - _nagare akai hisagomaru - _faced him. It was attached to a long thin shaft that went into a vast glass gun barrel, which in turn continued to a slanted blunt end, from this protruded a sharp silver needle the length his katana had been. The crystal cylinder was encased in a dark metal frame and coiled about with a silver snake, all balanced upon a tripod. It was a bazooka, a cannon, a torpedo launcher; over three metres long. Hanatarou couldn't fathom where it had come from.

_A snake coiled around a staff is an ancient symbol for the god of medicine, in a land far from here. Hanatarou-san, if you please…_ prompted the voice in his head.

"I can't move," whimpered the Seventh Seat listlessly.

_The command is 'chuunyuu suru', inject._ The voice tried to encourage him.

"The command for what?" he asked vacantly.

_Our bankai._

"…wha…?"

_I know we may never achieve it ourselves, but, he had so much reiatsu, I couldn't help drinking it all! I thought I would burst, so this was all I could do to prevent it. I know you're hurting, Hanataro-san, but please…this might be the only time I ever…we ever…in our lives!_

"Bankai?" repeated the medic in disbelief, simply staring at the vast, glowing syringe. It was so close, the plunger for detonation, yet it seemed a thousand miles away. His arm had been ripped off, and the only thing holding him together right now was his zanpakuto's shy willpower. "But how…?"

Beyond the pointed needle tip, the harrowed Espada was dragging itself to its feet, a shambling zombie, disgraced and vengeful. It hissed balefully, glaring green orbs the only hint of colour in its black and white face. Ulquiorra felt weak, it was a slimy, creeping feeling that he abhorred. If only shinigamis died as easily as humans did. He would settle for choking the trash with his bare hands, gouging its beating heart out with his claws, anything to halt this debasement of what was meant to be Aizen's elite soldier.

The healer felt a thrill of fear and adrenaline shoot through him, it numbed the agony for a second, just enough.

_This must be what heroes do. This is what strength is,_ he thought to himself feebly, shuffling forward and collapsing against the pump. It slid in easily. The strain of that small movement made him feel ready to die. _I never asked for glory._

_Yet we will not be crushed like insects, or die cowards; _Hisagomaru soothed his partner with quiet pride. _Say the words happily, Hanatarou, this is not just a weapon. This is our bond._

"Such strange things connect the dead and their blades…" muttered the shinigami, slipping to the floor among droplets of blood. "Chuunyuu suru, Nagare Akai Hisagomaru!"

The reiatsu condensed in the prick of the hypodermic needle burst out in a ray of crimson laser light. It seared straight through the struggling arrancar, striking the wall behind him and rebounding in a spreading wave of molten plasma. The energy poured out endlessly, pooling and spreading across the courtyard, drowning everyone.

Schiffer wailed, an eerie keen that sounded like a new born Hollow's scream of damnation in reverse. Yumichika yelped, broken out of his trance of incredulity, and scrambled away from the deadly flow. Hanatarou relaxed and let the current carry him away. A faint smile lit his face. If he was dying, he didn't mind it. For him it was like being dipped into a sense of safety and familiarity, his zanpakuto's energy. He no longer worried that the sword might be a vampire. At the strongest moment in his afterlife, he allowed unconsciousness to swallow him whole.

**o)0(o**

"Say," suggested Coyote, looking at the walls of the Starkk-shaped crater he was lying in with mild amusement; "are you a gambler, Mr...?"

"Zaraki Kenpachi, Captain of the Eleventh Division, strongest fucker in the entire city. Now who the hell are you, coz I'll forget to ask when I'm beating the living shit outta ya."

"Ah well, I guess there's not much point in keeping it a secret now that the war has truly begun," mused the Espada, then stood up and stretched his gloved hand over the lip of the 8-foot-deep pit Zaraki had punched him into. "Coyote Starrk, Primera Espada. Nice to meet you."

"What the feck is Primera Espada meant to mean? I don't speak French!"

"It's Spanish, retard, it means First Sword." spat Lilynette with an impressive level of disdain.

Kenpachi seemed to perk up at this. "Top dog? Lucky me. You might be able to relieve my boredom a little." He leant down and grasped the arrancar's hand, hauling him out of the hole in one tug and smashing him into the rocks behind with a spin of his arm. "What's the bet?"

Starrk dusted a few splintered boulders off his face and coat. He couldn't help but chuckle. It was such a novelty to be beaten up rather than erase all nearby existence, he was almost enjoying the bruising. "Well. I'm sure you and I are both tired of the usual drawn out,"

"I like drawn out fights."

"-noisy,"

"I love yellin'."

"-reiatsu-flaring,"

"Nah, I enjoy that, they're usually such pipsqueaks it feels like a jacuzzi, ya know?"

"-_boring_-,"

"Ah, I get ya."

"-battles, right? So I propose we just go all out from the very start, and go for a samurai-style one-strike-kill."

Zaraki squinted at him for a few moments, and at long length snorted eloquently. "How about I wear two eyepatches and not use my sword?"

"That rather defeats the object of samurai-style..."

The captain stretched languidly, every bulky muscle standing out through his shihakusho and several joints cricking loudly. "I didn't waste all these months waitin' fer ya to invade, to have no fun when ya got here. This's gotta keep me entertained till the next uprising or zanpakuto spaz out or vigilante gang or ryokas or whatever shit goes down. And I betcha when it does that prick Kurosaki Ichigo'll nick all the best opponents again."

Coyote deflated somewhat. He couldn't be bothered with a long, torturous war. He liked the easy-going life. He was quite tempted to raid Karakura for mod cons and spend the rest of forever holed up in Las Noches eating crisps and listening to mellow music. The only thing stopping him wasn't Aizen - it was the lack of an electric power grid in Hueco Mundo.

"Yachiru, go find a good seat to watch the show from, yeah?"

In fact, perhaps he could rig it up to Gin's old computer consoles, though he wasn't quite sure what they ran on nor had he been born in a tech-savvy era.

"Mou, Ken-chan! Why do I never get to play? !"

Then again, perhaps all the batteries in Karakura would keep him going for a while...and when they ran out, he would ransack the next town over for more...

"Eh, how about that Hollow chick over there? Maybe she'll entertain you a bit."

But that lead to the issue of converting them into spiritual matter, otherwise he'd have pillaged and killed hundreds by accident, and have nothing to show for it but a heap of physical objects he couldn't take home.

"Ken-chan is sexist! Boooo!"

So the life of a reclusive music-lover wasn't going to work. It truly was dull to be a Hollow. At least the Shinigamis had managed to build a pretend city, most likely because in their collective weakness, they were free to huddle together without burning one another.

"Don't stick ya tongue out at me. I'll chop it off."

Though had they said Kurosaki Ichigo? Wasn't he the brother of Espada Zero, Tenebra Shirojos?

"Ken-chan, Ken-chan sucks, crazy meanie Ken-chan!"

He wondered how she was getting on. Not in a sentimental fashion, merely that the thought of her popping out of the woodwork for some final battle was rather chilling.

"That doesn't even rhyme."

Though if Ichigo had been taking all the best opponents, that implied he was stronger than Zaraki, which implied that there was no one stronger than Shirojos in Soul Society, and Starrk should end up with a fairly simple fight.

"Yeah it does!"

On that note, he coughed for everyone's attention and waved Lilynette over. "Shinigami," he said impatiently. "Are you going to do this my way or not?"

"Nope. I'm gonna slaughter yer slowly, and loudly, and messily. It won't bore you once yer dead."

The tall Espada pulled his gloves off neatly, finger by finger, sighing. "Such a _pain_. Don't be surprised if you die in the next minute, because I don't want this to take all day."

"Oi oi...if you're that good you could've wasted me ten times already. Why're you such a fuckin' time waster?"

The Fraccion kicked her esteemed leader in the crotch, and the man went a very pale shade. "You see that, Starrk! Even he thinks you're a lazy ass, and he's just met you! Freaking procrastinator...I don't know why I stick around with you..."

"That's a little harsh, Lily-chan..." squeaked the Primera, eyes watering.

Yachiru leaned closer to Zaraki's ear from her perch on his shoulder. "Ne, Ken-chan, is this what 'whipped' means?"

The captain scratched his spiky dreadlocks briefly, the bells jingling merrily. "Ah...mebbe. If he gets his act together, I guess so..." He picked the tiny girl up by the scruff of her robe, and looked her in the eye. "This dude might be able to scratch me, so I want you to watch from somewhere else, a'ight?"

The fukutaicho squealed in protest, it was so boring to just watch all the time, Ken-chan always hogged all the fun, and why couldn't he hide in a corner whilst she fought for once?

"Ya kidding me? I let you kill that Gillian the other day!" He allowed her to prattle on for a few more seconds, then adjusted his grip and hurled the midget way into the distance. "See ya later, Yachiru." He nodded towards Lilynette Gingerback, the bells jangled again. "Want me to get rid of this weaklin' too?"

Coyote yawned, looking bored to death. "Sure, why not? If the enthusiastic guy's not gonna take it seriously why should I?"

Zaraki paused, a gleam of interest in his one visible eye, and nudged the small blond Fraccion out of his way with the flat of his sword. "…What counts as serious?"

Starrk shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. Without the flicker of an eyelid, a vast bolt of aquamarine energy surged forth and bulldozed the shinigami at point-blank range. It was equivalent to being flattened by a bullet train. "Shall we go?" he asked his partner before the dust had settled. "Come to think of it, I didn't even need to stand up to win that fight."

The girl groaned, face-palming her helmet. "Only you would devise a Cero that doesn't require you to lift a finger."

Coyote glanced over her shoulder with wide eyes.

_"Ahahahahaa…HAHAHAHAAA…**BAHAHAHAHAAAA!" **_ Kenpachi stood entwined in the dissipating smoke, entire body shaking with the force of his rough laughter. A thin brimstone-yellow aura clung to his shihakusho, curled away from his spikes as if each were a flaming torch, and the black eye patch had disintegrated. He pointed his rusty, serrated sword at the Espada with a voracious grin. "I like you. You were worth the wait." With his spare hand he rolled back his right sleeve and began peeling off all the other power dampeners he wore out of sight. They speckled his arms like nicotine patches. "Gimme a sec…we'll do your samurai shit."

Starrk wore a slightly pained expression as he gestured for Lilynette to wait behind him. Each reiatsu-guzzling monster that Kenpachi plucked from his skin unlocked a fresh level of power. Starrk's hair was being ruffled by the breezes it generated.

"Hell, if you're that worried, just let me help," scolded the girl, tapping the red flame tattooing her mask fragment.

"Not 'worried'; 'annoyed'. I thought Aizen-sama said this invasion would be _easy_."

"It still can be! Besides, you said you'd fight at full power."

"I lied! It's such a bother, Resurrección… Hey, shinigami taichou. At least use your bankai before we start."

The man's face was difficult to read, riddled with scars and craggy-featured as it was, yet he seemed halfway between amused and incredulous. "Shit, I thought you wanted a quick fight."

The two Hollows tilted their heads in perfect tandem. They didn't get the joke.

A jagged blade with a battered hilt, they could almost hear it screaming in torment as Zaraki looked at it noncommittally and channelled his jaundiced yellow powers through it. "You'd be waitin' forever to see my bankai; fuck, I can't even squeeze out shikai. If you wanna fight two on one, you'd better find some other captain to play with, because I ain't got no zanpakuto picking up my slack." All limiters removed, he cricked his neck from left to right and began to focus his reiatsu a little more seriously. Sulphur flames licked up into the sky, the raging inferno crowned by a roaring skull above his head.

"That looks like a Hollow mask," yelled Lilynette, as if he'd cheated somehow. "Don't tell me he's another La Muerte!"

The skull danced like the grim reaper in the death god's pyre, laughing and howling. It grinned delightfully at the chance to fight at full output. Kenpachi's matched it. "It's not a mask, ya fuckwit, it's a human skull. My strength comes from my own flesh and bones; what you see is what you get. Now bring it."

The Primera Espada tucked his gloves into his coat and unsheathed his sword, the 1 tattooed onto the back of his hand clearly visible. "Then that leaves us on an equal footing." A shimmer of blue cloaked the length of his blade. Unlike the usual pattern, where the shinigami's control far exceeded the Hollow's mindless thrashing; Starrk's ability was both immense and precise. Although he had an ocean at his disposal, he did not waste a drop. Though what appeared to be skill was just the minimum effort necessary in disguise.

They widened the gap between, Zaraki wanting a good run up if he was going to kill the guy in one hit so fleetingly. "I guess I might use some of that kendo Yama-jii's been drillin' into me, since yer got so much potential. Apparently if you use both hands – it's a bit better…" One weathered hand joined its twin on the sword's hilt. As they raised their blades, Kenpachi's power redoubled and pierced the sky in a pillar of blazing ferocity. The gravity of his reiatsu was so dense it pulled all his other energy flares into an orbiting corkscrew, a tornado of death.

"You are far better suited to Hueco Mundo, my friend;" smiled Coyote Starrk, and with a tilt of his wrist slashed the captain before he could even take one step. From several metres away, he swept his sword sideways a second time, and a fountain of blood gushed from the shinigami's torso. He lowered his arm gradually, watching the tower of light slit down its centre and shatter.

Zaraki slumped to the ground, almost shell-shocked. What was that? He'd got covered in blood again and he hadn't even seen the guy move! How had he reached from way over there?

"It's like cutting a cloud with a diamond," explained the Espada idly, sheathing his sword. "I used the exact same amount of reiatsu as you did – just much better placed."

The reaper gazed at his stained hand and grinned, flopping back onto the reddened dirt. "This is freakin' _ace_. I wanna see yer Resurrección next!"

He coughed, a fat mouthful of red jumped out of his throat, and the raised hand rebounded off the ground. A demon cut down like a blade of grass.

**o)0(o**

Ulquiorra was hyperventilating, his black fingers scrabbled at the ground as if he could stop it from twisting and bucking so giddily. Shadows of black-outs kept encroaching on his eyes, threatening to leave him unconscious and forgotten in a city he did not belong to. He couldn't see, could barely breathe, and he felt…he felt…

_He felt._

There was something hot and unfamiliar rushing through the dried and darkened channels of his body, something in his chest thudding at speeds he could not control. It lay where there should have been an empty space, cradled in his ribcage like a baby in an embrace, heavy and warm and fragile.

A sentimentalist would have said it was himself.

But who was that?

There was no profit in knowing which of the countless, small-soul trash he had consumed over the years had come out at the forefront of his awareness and dictated what little personality he had. There was certainly no value in knowing where that wretch had stood the day before it became a Hollow, or what it had seen, or who it had believed itself to be. What state, after all the uncounted centuries of flying beneath an eternal night, was the presence of this muscle meant to return him to?

_This heart belonged to nobody._

Yes, it might pump the vivid sensation of blood around his cursed body now, but it had performed none of the miracles, the promises that Orihime had implied hearts could give.

_No._

_It was only making him feel sick and helpless._

The reiatsu he had flaunted so recently now felt poisonous and degraded, the dispassionate despair he had defined himself by seemed more a rusted cage than the simple state of being it had been before. And it was diminishing. This over-exulted heart couldn't even hold onto the energy that fuelled him, and the power he had so much 'faith' in was withering away.

That which separated him from the faceless masses of Gillians and the foolish masses of humanity, that which held him aloof, was now crushing him under its weight like the very maggots he once feasted upon.

He straightened enough to see that the strange steel-and-glass, strong-and-weak bankai had disappeared, its payload spent. His head was under vice-like pain. His clawed hands floated up to check it for injuries, and at a single touch his long, slender, elegantly angled horns crumbled away. The snap sent a nauseous percussion through his skull, he winced and wrenched off the second one. They rested in each hand, tapering shafts, the final stronghold of his broken mask.

Pieces of scrap.

Was that all he was?

Having no human identity to return to, was he going from being deluded trash to being no one?

Behind, his wings were splintering, each fragment igniting with the blue fire of a soul reaper's exorcism as they fluttered away, embers on a breeze. Instinctively his hand jerked forward to recapture them, and even the black stains up his arms were peeling away from his skin, in thin strands and angular patches. Only his blunt nails were left dark, a little reminder that an evil soul could not be scrubbed fully clean. Not by a weak Seventh Seat medic at least.

He wondered if he would disappear entirely as he regarded the thin green scar snaking round where his hollow used to be, and the dark tears pouring from it that had been erased. Even if his body remained, he was still being turned into a blank slate, a tabula rasa on which to record new thoughts and fresh sins.

What remained of his reiatsu, now that all the shinigamis had taken their bite of it, their pound of flesh…ebbed away quietly. A thin emerald haze that fled like mist beneath the sunrise.

Tears, real tears, colourless drops of seawater, streamed down his cheeks, his lungs barely hitched. An emotion he could not name was glowing inside him, immense pains he had grown desensitised to melted away for the very first time. A sense of self – he had never noticed its absence until it returned – had all his actions prior been empty shams of this? – it saturated him, and he stared at the colourful world all around him, drinking in the cacophony of variety. His eyes saw not just monochrome facts, but myriad _possibilities._

It was overwhelming. He could not deny how very brittle he had become, that even the misplaced joy welling up in his…_heart?_ made him dizzy.

He tipped onto one side, curled up, embryonic. Clutching his knees to his chest just to have some sense of stability. His tufted whip of a tail coiled round his shrinking form, Schiffer gazed at it with damp eyes, expecting this extension of his spine to evaporate soon too.

He closed his eyes and breathed deep. He tried to remember who he was.

**o)0(o**

"Well," said a male voice that had absolutely no idea what to make of itself. The pale, tailed Plus soul was prodded by the toe of a sandal. "I guess this proves there's more than one way to skin a Hollow."

Hanatarou, washed up against the opposite wall of the courtyard, sat up and blinked. "Ano…the arrancar is still alive?" He tried to fight the crushing disappointment, after all it probably took many captain-class shinigami to bring an Espada down, and it was his first and last attempt at bankai ever, and he was only _Hanatarou_ after all…

"Something's still alive," judged Yumichika in knowing tones; "but it sure as hell ain't a Hollow anymore. Just what the hell did you _do?_ You got your arm ripped off and you're not even dead!"

"I – uh, um, I…" There was a scalpel sticking upright in the dirt between the paving cracks near his surviving hand. "Hisagomaru…we? Even the bankai heals?"

"Don't call that a bankai!" said Ayasegawa in a rush, petrified by the implications of _Yamada_ outranking him. "It was a fluke! A freak occurrence! A bankai takes 20 years to attain and master, _at least_, and you'll never be able to produce that on command again!"

_Actually, _Ruri'iro Kujaku informed its master tartly; _a bankai takes a close bond between zanpakuto and shinigami, which has no time limits. You wouldn't know that, Mr Wisteria-is-my-favourite-colour, would you? Freak occurrences occur all the time in periods of war. It only means the benevolent zanpakutos are kind enough to take the strain of fighting upon themselves rather than wait for their pathetic, petty wielders to catch up._ _Wouldn't you agree?_

"Shut up, you vain bastard;" hissed Yumichika frantically, shunting the sword back into its sheath as if that would gag it.

"Nagare Akeiro Hisagomaru," mumbled Hanatarou in quiet awe. "It was an honour, Hisago-chan."

_I could have released all that energy as damage and pulverised him, _replied the zanpakuto timidly. _But I was worried you would die, so I made sure it would heal instead. It's a shame he's become a Plus though, his reiatsu was so morbid and delectable. I know I will never taste anything so delicious._

"Wha! Hisago-chan, I still can't tell if you're nice or not!"

The ex-Hollow seemed to have fallen asleep from exhaustion, curled up on the ground like a child. Yumichika kicked it again to no reaction. "I guess it didn't vanish because it's already in Soul Society, like with that Karin kid. Look, it's still got a tail, and it's dead white. I mean, so is Kurotsuchi-taicho, but he wears make-up. This just proves you're not at captain standard yet. Hitsugaya-taicho managed a perfect soul burial even inside the Shrine, didn't he?" He nodded to himself, satisfied that there was no competition.

"Karin didn't have a tail to begin with," muttered Hanatarou rebelliously, with just a hint of backbone. He caught the Eleventh Squad Fifth Seat glaring at him and flinched into action, moving automatically to check the Plus/Minus's vital signs for his medical records. "Aha, ah, so, Ayasegawa-san…what should we do with him now?"

The fashionista blinked vacantly. "Fuck if I know. Stick a ribbon on him and give him to Kurotsuchi?"

**o)0(o**

Lilynette Gingerback wandered over to the fallen death god, kicking her feet up as she walked, hands tucked into her belt. In a role reversal of what was happening elsewhere in the city, the Hollow nudged the shinigami with her fur lined boot, careful not to get blood on the white leather.

"One hit K.O." She glanced sourly at her leader. "Happy now, samurai-san? You've got no excuse to be lazy if they all fall as easily as this."

A small pink missile collided into her side. The Fraccion went flying, shrieking all the way.

Yachiru bounced onto her feet, cracked her neck ominously and dashed in a beeline to her captain's side. Skidding to a halt beside his supine body, she clutched her head dramatically and screamed.

"**_OH MY GAWD, YOU KILLED KENNY!_**"

Starrk watched her in bemusement. He'd made it clear that killing the man was his intention. Why would a shinigami be so surprised by death? "If you're intending to avenge him, take it up with Lilynette. I really can't bend down enough to fight you."

She gaped at him with horror-stricken eyes, then laughed a bubbling gush of happiness. "I just wanted an excuse to say it. Don't you know what Kenpachi means?"

Beside her, Zaraki's eyes cracked open, his murderous aura boiling over in an instant.

"Didja have to interrupt? I was enjoying the novelty of bein' downed in the first hit!"

The arrancar raised his eyebrows. Yachiru grinned at him charmingly.

"It means, no matter how many times you kill Ken-chan; he'll never ever die!"

Starrk groaned hole-heartedly. "Is everyone but me obsessed with the idea of putting forth effort? Just stay down. I have no desire to fight."

"Are you fucking _kidding me?_" roared Lilynette, sprinting back from the site of her crash landing. "I'm gonna tear her head off!" She leapt at the tiny girl's back, zanpakuto digging downwards.

Yachiru watched the predator's descent with big eyes. A pink spark raced in a circle round her feet, and a funnel of blazing neon reiatsu gusted upwards, snapping demonic cat-like jaws.

"Uh-oh," warned the vice-captain cutely as her attacker went flying for the second time. "If you hurt me, Ken-chan will get mad, and then the battle won't last so long. You gotta be careful of him."

"Careful of _him_?" spat the blonde. "I'm more worried about you! Starrk! Let's do this properly!"

"Ehh."

"NOW!" commanded his subordinate, headbutting the Primera in the back of his skull. Her horn stabbed him painfully.

"Okay, okay! I'll do it! Just stop…_abusing_ me!" The Espada gingerly placed his hand upon her mask, over the scarlet flame drawn above her eyesocket. "Why did all the bellicosity end up in the weaker half, hmm?"

The Fraccion growled at him even as her body began to glow and ripple, breaking apart around the edges. "Because we wanted to become weak enough to deserve companionship, part became weak; but also because you didn't want to fight, I got all the aggressiveness! Who could know what we were like before? No one survived long enough to tell us our own face!"

The light they emitted became too strong to see past, and all the shinigamis could make out was the final exchange of words.

"Do you think we might have been female originally?"

"_Who gives a shit?_"

Zaraki didn't have much experience in sensing reiatsus when they were right under his nose, yet even he could sense the strange twisting of reality around that column of sky blue radiance.

Coyote's voice rang out, deeper and uncommonly serious.

_"Kick about, Los Lobos!"_

The light abruptly winked out, and the Primera's Resurrección was revealed in all its glory. The earth cracked and shuddered beneath his feet, he leapt into the air immediately. Lilynette had vanished.

Yachiru stared transfixed at the ornamental silver pistols in his hands. "That's possible?" she murmured indistinctly. Entranced, she didn't move until a sapphire bullet knocked her off her feet.

"I don't get it," grumbled Kenpachi, standing up and wiping his bloody hand off on his captain's robe. "What happened to the midget?"

"She's the guns," chirped his fukutaicho, recovering. "They're one arrancar split into two."

"Weird," said her father figure, rapping his chipped and battered sword against his shoulder. "Guess that's a change." He leant down to pick her up as before, and she latched onto his forearm to prevent being tossed away again.

"Let me stay this time, Ken-chan! Lobo-Lobo is two against one, that's not fair!"

The Eleventh Captain was about to flatly refuse her, however he noticed the tiny scratch across her permanently-blushing cheek, and suddenly forgot whatever rational thoughts he'd been entertaining. Automatically plonking her on his back, he looked up and fixed the arrancar with a rather cruel stare.

"Pickin' on a kid is a bit low, ain't it?"

Another Cero was heading straight for them, he raised his zanpakuto and batted it away without a second thought. From his vantage point Starrk hummed attentively. If he had known reapers could get so strong, he might have sought friends from among them earlier.

He was decked out in silver-grey wolf hides, lining his long cowboy coat and wrapping his forearms and shins. Wolf tails hung from his wide belt, hunting trophies, and the collar above his double-breasted jacket was like a mane. Long bandoleers looped across his back and rattled in the wind, though what manner of bullets they contained was not visible. All that remained of his smaller fraction was the flame-marked mask encircling his left eye. Beneath that the scruffy goatee and small, focused smile. And a pair of very loud, very angry handguns.

Zaraki was behind him instantly, a monster looming over and slashing down with a golden explosion of power. The bullet belts were severed, scattering their contents to the four winds, hundreds of steely shells raining down. Starrk spun and fired a Cero Metralleta, covered his tracks as he used Sonido to dart higher into the cloud-spattered sky.

"Ken-chan, it's not one big attack, it's squillions of little ones!" called out Yachiru, clinging on for dear life as her captain dodged the onslaught. Several broke free of the main shoal of Ceros, dogging their every step until Kenpachi negated them with random melee attacks of his own. He paused a moment, pushed for breath.

"This ain't bad…not bad at all," he grinned.

"This is bad," frowned Coyote elsewhere. "The bandoleers are gone already. I didn't even know they could come off."

_"That's not a setback at all, you imbecile," _sighed the pistols in tandem. _"Think strategically. Now we have him surrounded. And stop poking me in the ass, would you!"_

"Lilynette, I'm not the one who designed which body part corresponded to which part of the guns, am I? You'll have to learn to ignore it."

_"I bet zanpakutos have this same problem when the reapers are swinging them about like sticks,"_ huffed his other half.

Yachiru pointed towards a cloud gleefully. "Lobo-chan went that-a-way!"

Zaraki charged, yelling with great gusto.

"Oh wait, no, he's behind us. THAT-A-WAY!"

The giant swerved and took off in the opposite direction, reminding himself yet again that he should get a satnav installed on his phone.

Attacking from beneath his opponent's feet, Zaraki managed to land a hit but the furry guards prevented him from drawing much blood, or preferably, lopping off a limb. "Hey! Hollow!"

"We told you our names," scolded Starrk, allowing gravity to drag him down for a quick escape.

"How close to serious are we now?" roared the Kenpachi, the man who never went down for good, and launched his maltreated sword at the falling Vasto Lorde with all the punch of a space rocket.

The Primera, who could fire Ceros at rates infinitely faster than any other Espada could manage Bala, deflected the speeding projectile with a single squeeze of the triggers. "_Your sharpshooting skills are getting a little better,"_ Gingerback complimented him grudgingly.

"Ken-chan!" snapped Yachiru, incensed. "Pick that sword up right this instant! How do you expect to ever learn Sword-kun's name if you toss him about like a Frisbee!" She yanked sharply on his hair and ears until the intimidating man complied.

The pair thudded into the ground, watched Starrk hastily fly upwards to avoid them as if the battle were taking place on a seesaw. The captain stomped over to his zanpakuto, the jagged edge of which had bit deep into the rocks and required forceful tugs to retrieve. He groused under his breath, the whole learning-his-zanpakuto's-name idea had grown stale very quickly after months without success. They were back in the perpetual state of mutual hatred. He only kept the damn thing because every other weapon broke within five minutes.

Starrk stared down from on high. "I see what you mean about strategy."

_"At last, we're fighting in earnest. Let's go," _said the pistols. _"Manada de Lobos!"_

They both tensed as their souls came yet closer to being one, serenaded from below by the unseen howling of a thousand wolves. Every lost bullet littering the battlefield flared with azure light, detonating with sharp blasts that ricocheted around the valley walls. The high keening of the wolf pack began to grown in complexity and volume, echoing and deafening.

Zaraki brushed a few final stone chips off his over-long katana, and regarded the cloud-grey canines surrounding him with mild confusion. "Hey, who let the dogs out?"

"Ken-chan," said Yachiru uneasily, shifting on her perch; "this isn't good. Don't fight them all at once."

"It's just artsy kido," replied her superior dismissively.

But he was wrong. Every hound he cut in half reformed like candle flames, every dog that bit him refused to let go, and their numbers swarmed unchecked. As the pack hunted and herded and nipped at him, harrying and weakening him bit by bit, he began to feel slightly apprehensive.

The wolves latched onto his robes and body started to shine, glaring, blinding. They snarled and growled, biting deeper.

"Run, Ken-chan! They're gonna blow!" screamed his lieutenant, lifting him by the white jacket and trying to flash-step away – she couldn't shake off the hellhounds.

"Yer in the way, Yachiru, I told ya to wait somewhere else…" She looked stricken by his words. He gave her a lopsided grin to cheer her up, and pulled the child into his battle-scarred arms; shielded the tiny girl as the wolves discharged and all the world was obscured by the Primera's devastating power.

**o)0(o**

The small valley by Soukyoku Hill had entirely changed its landscape. Its contours had been flattened; its plains had been ripped up into jagged hillocks. At the centre of all the chaos, a little girl sat up on her guardian's chest and brushed her mussed pink hair out of her eyes.

"Ken-chan," she sniffled, shaking him. "_Ken-chan?_"

Zaraki groaned and did not move. The wolves were circling again, twining in and out of each other's paths, singing and yipping to each other. Not just funny-shaped Ceros, but fragments of pure soul that knew what they were doing.

"Ken-chan, one of the dogs bit my zanpakuto and it melted," whined the child. She held a twisted pink and purple and metal mess, one lonely stabiliser wheel still hanging off the tip of the sheath. The flower shaped hilt's petals had wilted.

"I'm gonna borrow yours for a bit, okay?"

Kenpachi managed with gargantuan effort to peel one eye open. "_Hey!_"

The blade taller than she was was removed from his clenched fist with ease. "I always prefer it when it's covered in blood, but it's not usually your own."

He struggled to process that, all it brought to mind was their first meeting; a feral child in the sickening district Kusajishi. Stroking his sword because the shiny metal had caught her attention, and not even noticing the scarlet it left on her small palm.

"_Oi, Yachiru_…" he croaked painfully. "The hell d'you think yer doin'?"

A wolf took the initiative and leapt at its prey. The fukutaicho's reiatsu surged, and a vast cat head became visible in the pink flames once again. The bubble-gum coloured jaws tore the grey wolf to shreds, a thousand rags and puffs of blue energy. It did not reform.

She glared over her shoulder at him with wild eyes and a ferocious expression. "You're annoying me, Ken-chan! When are you ever gonna let me fight?"

"But yer a midget!"

The sword trailed in the dirt, bouncing off pebbles as she walked back to her captain. In Zaraki's hand it was already too long, in hers it resembled Masamune. She placed her foot on his throat and exerted the slightest pressure. "That's not what you're meant to say, Ken-chan."

His face was unreadable.

"Pleee-eee-eeease?" wheedled his mostly-adopted daughter sweetly.

Kenpachi smirked, thinking it would at least be entertaining to watch her try and swing his sword. "Whatever. Butcher him for me, Yachiru!"

There was a moment of silence as she looked like all her birthdays had come at once.

_"Finally!"_ roared a strange, familiar voice in triumph, resounding from within his head, he saw the kid's lips move, but her words crawled through his bones, shaking him awake. _"Finally you remember my name!"_

Reiatsu was leaping upwards, shimmering out from her skin, in volumes he'd had no idea she could achieve. And his own was rising to meet it, drawn magnetically, torrenting out beyond his control. The lurid shades of pink and yellow met, clashed, blended, and became the scorching orange of a flash fire.

_"You named me after the only person you ever respected…do you remember why you respected him?"_

"Nope," bleated Zaraki, wide-eyed and completely lost with the situation.

_"Yachiru was your zanpakuto, stupid…and even when you became so strong you rejected me, I still wanted to be by your side. So I came to Soul Society, and searched for you in Rukongai for years and years. But you'd forgotten me."_

"I thought I found you," argued the man, imbued with fresh strength by their powers combined; he managed to sit up and stare down at the spontaneously combusting little girl.

_"Ken-chan is strong, and fearless, and never regrets. Anyone else with his strength would go mad, but Ken-chan always loved war no matter who or what he was. Ken-chan never wanted my help. But I'll make an exception for you today. I can heal your wounds just once; I saw Zangetsu do it to Icchi when you fought him."_

He made a concerted effort to connect all the odds and ends she was saying in his head, and finally spoke with an irritated air. "Why didn't yer just tell me when I was tryin' ta learn your name? Are you stupid or omething'?"

She watched his face solemnly. _"It doesn't work until you're ready to listen, silly."_

He tch'ed, but he was feeling better already, much much better, and buzzing with decades of Yachiru's pent-up bloodlust. He glanced up at the Espada who was just a speck in the sky and licked his lips. "How d'we do this shit then?"

_"Same as they did,"_ chirped his zanpakuto spirit, passing him their zanpakuto. _ "They told you this sword was permanently released in shikai, but really it was just a shell, a corpse-blade. For the real shikai-"_

"Let's go straight to bankai," interrupted Zaraki.

_"No! No way! You owe me a million bags of candy before I give you bankai! Because you've been mean! I'm keeping count," she huffed. "You're still in the ten-thousands even including the sweets the other captains and Byakushi give me."_

"Mneh. Whatever. All this chattin' shit's getting boring. Let's just kill the bugger."

Surrounded by a horde of baying wolves, in the centre of a decimated bombsite, the two opposites smiled at each other.

_"Call my name, Ken-chan."_

**"Butcher, Yachiru!"** thundered Zaraki, raising his zanpakuto with malicious satisfaction.

Yachiru vanished like a popped bubble.

He looked around for her, caught off-guard; then saw what his tatty, ugly sword had transformed into.

"Oho." He waved it experimentally a few times. "That's _badass._"

**o)0(o**

**_Bloomake!_**

_Shinigami Cup!_

**o)0(o**

alliriyan. deviant art. com/art/ HB-Zaraki-s-shikai-Butcher-Yachiru-267579398

Remove the spaces, and feast your eyes on Yachiru's true form!

Or this teeny url: ******tinyurl . com /**blvwzye

**o)0(o**

Ulquiorra: Woman, are you afraid of me?  
Orihime: Pfft…NO! You just got asskicked by Hanatarou…bahahaha!  
**  
o)0(o**

_One that was missed in Arc One:_

Ulquiorra: Eat. You are no use to Aizen-sama if you starve to death.  
Orihime: I refuse!  
Ulquiorra: Then I shall have to force the food down your throat.  
Orihime: Oh no!  
Ulquiorra: *loads up a fork* …Here comes the aeroplane! _Nyooowww-www!_

**o)0(o**

*Kurotsuchi Mayuri appears, ready to play evil scientist*  
Ulquiorra: May I borrow your scalpel?  
Mayuri: …What?  
Ulquiorra: This 'heart' thing inside me. I need to look at it and figure out what it is.  
Mayuri: You…_want_ to be vivisected?  
*Ulquiorra nods calmly*  
Mayuri: Willing victims are so off-putting! I feel _violated_. No, you're not having my precious scalpel. *leaves*  
Ulquiorra: *looks at Hanatarou* Hey, trash. Lend me your zanpakuto.

**o)0(o**

**Chapter Notes: ** _Hey guys, I'm doing Nanowrimo again, so hopefully this mammoth fic will be over by December. Let's just ignore my university work for now…_

_A snake around a staff is the symbol of the Greek god of healing and medicine, Asclepius. Hence there's a snake around the barrel of Hanatarou's syringezooka. I promised you he'd get a bankai!_

Masamune is Sephiroth's sword, if anyone forgot.

_I can't believe how long this chapter became; I even had to split it. You just read **8,500** words exactly. And FFN counts it much higher, around 9,400.  
_

_In other news, I have a recommendation for IchiHime fans – **ChildoftheAshes – Tainting the Roses Red.** She's a much better writer than me (she modestly disagrees) and it will blow your mind. =D_

_FINALLY: YOU MAY GIVE SUGGESTIONS OR VOTE FOR ULQUIORRA'S FATE. Have fun!_


	42. Checkmate

**Hell Butterfly**

**Checkmate**

**~42~**

**o)0(o**

All the flaws of his nameless sword heightened. The dull, chipped, snaggletooth blade, the unwieldy length, the almost-silent scream of energy whistling through an empty vessel; were now gleaming blunt fangs, intimidating bulk, and the unmistakable thunder of fused spirits.

It revved like a rock song.

"I ain't sure what this is," admitted Kenpachi, hefting the monstrous weapon up and down in one hand experimentally; "but I like it."

"_It's called a chainsaw, baka Ken-chan!"_

"Think yer missed out the pointy sharp bit for stabbin' people with, Yachiru."

"_I'm not for stabbing, I'm for RIPPING! CRUNCHING ENEMIES INTO PASTE! GRINDING THEIR FLESH AND FLAYING THEIR BONES BARE! GOUGE ME INTO OUR ENEMIES AND WATCH THEIR INSIDES SHRED LIKE PAPER!"_

Zaraki looked slightly aghast. "Yer too young ta be that bloodthirsty," he scolded her. "Wassup, a century o' repressed aggression or somethin'?" He shaded his eyes, peering up into the sky, his opponent silhouetted against the midday sun. "Now where's that Espada gone, I wanna carve his fuckin' guts out."

"_Yaaay!"_ He could almost see Yachiru skipping for joy in the back of his mind, a place he did not often look.

His grip tightened on the long bandaged hilt, and the mesh of jagged teeth sticking from the side of the zanpakuto began to whirl, revolving at blurring speeds. The links began to warm up with the friction; the chainsaw's jaws glowing orange from the heat. All of his wayward, messy, uncontrollable power had been wrestled into submission by Yachiru's spirit and channelled into the flaming machine embodying her.

"Here, doggy doggy doggy," he taunted lightly, delighted when the entire wolf pack launched themselves forward at once. One sweep of the chainsword and they were culled, wheat before a scythe. It no longer passed through their insubstantial bodies but tore them apart, one reiatsu overpowering another with just the right, enjoyable amount of effort.

The silver wolves began to explode in a chain reaction, igniting each other, each eruption capable of toppling skyscrapers, rippling out in a sea of cerulean fire that ruptured the earth and triggered dizzying quakes.

Zaraki flew upwards on the updraft, using it to propel him towards the alpha wolf like a torpedo. His captain's haori had caught fire, trailing plumes of smoke in its wake. "Primera!" he bragged. "Your pets were gettin' boring so I hadta put them down!"

The pistols had vanished when the wolves were released, and Lilynette's voice curdled with Coyote's as they replied. There were no outer signs of the Fraccion left but a crimson eye mask and her relentless drive visible in the posture of a formerly bone-idle Espada. Their long white coat snapped in the gale caused by the outburst below.

"You're reckless. The _Manada de Lobos_ were only spare fragments of our soul."

They clashed and recoiled, dealing and deflecting fast and furious blows. Starrk fended the shinigami off with two swords forged of pure reiryoku, yet at every parry Yachiru bit deeper into the shining blades until they smashed.

A brief pause allowed both parties to regain their bearings, prowling and circling each other a mile high in the cheerful sky.

"It's wonderful to be in the company of equals," mentioned Starrk to his other self, taking in the sprawling city laid out beneath them for a moment. "Among all those tiny ants, one could rise to our level…"

"Don't get so sentimental about the guy you plan to kill in ten minutes," Lilynette reproached him.

Coyote smiled freely. "That's the best person to get sentimental about. How many other people lasted ten minutes?"

"You know… " trailed off Lilynette. "From this vantage point, you could almost see a future without loneliness…"

Their shared eyes fixed upon their nemesis, who was strolling nonchalantly above a vast empty drop, swinging his zanpakuto about happily like a child with a new toy. For a few seconds, they pondered whether a chainsaw was classed as a penetrating weapon or truly savage blunt trauma.

"If only we could remember why we gained all this power in the first place," mused the Vasto Lorde arrancar. "There must have been a reason once upon a time."

"I don't know. Hopefully some change will come of it, and Aizen will transform Hueco Mundo into a better world."

Their mouth stretched in a wide, sarcastic smile. "That's a bad joke, Lily-chan."

"_Are they waiting for another samurai standoff?"_ giggled Kusajishi Yachiru, and Zaraki passed the taunt on, hollering across their battlefield of sky.

Genuine humour crossed Starrk's face. "No!" he yelled back. "Now we're serious…it's a Wild West Showdown!"

He whispered to his own mind; "Lily, do we have any big guns left in our arsenal?"

"We've never had to fight to this point before. Just make something up."

He shrugged.

"Eh, alright then. I don't know what this'll do but… Let's have…a little less bark and a little more bite…_Canino Colmillo Canoso!"_

**o)0(o**

A handful of surviving wolves hauled themselves out from beneath the rubble left by their pack's detonation, charring the ground wherever their paws padded, bunching their muscles for the second assault. They sprang upwards in a barrage of fierce barks and howls and snarling. Latching onto Kenpachi's already punctured limbs, snapping their long flaming muzzles.

They pinned him to the sky easily, like a rabbit snared in a corner, and as fast as he tore them off by the scruffs of their necks or pulverised them with the chainsaw, they returned for more blood.

And the arrancar…he'd been doused in petrol and set alight, a blue-burning effigy. His body was melting, the mask spreading to hide more and more of his contorted face. It consumed his former laidback nature, leaving only the spite and hatred of the lost soul.

"Forget it," spat the deformed beast, falling forwards to stand on all fours. "Forget the shattered masks, the pretend companions, the tearing myself in two just to be a little weaker, a little more similar to all the pathetic pissants crawling across the wretched earth." It spoke in a voice with no gender, only malice and frustration and hunger. "Forget reason and control and apathy…! You're nothing but MEAT!"

A wolf is just a ravening stomach with legs all the better to hunt with and fangs all the better to devour the world.

A Hollow is just a wolf that can never be sated.

A shinigami is just a meal waiting to die.

The teeth sank deep into his shoulder, snagged the skin at his throat, the jaws pincered tighter, the rows of canines scraped together with a sickening quiet noise Zaraki could feel through his collarbone. The alpha wolf twisted its thick neck sharply, tearing muscle from ligament and flesh from skeleton; as blood streamed down its chest and steamed violently, as the meat sizzled in the heat of the monster's breath; Coyote stared Kenpachi shamelessly in the eye,

And swallowed.

"I'll devour you all and be alone again. I despise lesser beings, seeing the corpses makes me hurl." He could see it lick the red off its greyish fangs, red that was meant to be inside his own veins, red that for the first time he feared the loss of. "Have I really spent all that time in Las Noches feigning to be some shinigami's pet dog? Amazing. Unbelievable. I should've eaten them all. Perhaps I'll do that next." Its maw stretched impossibly wide, heat waves rolling off its mane. "How could I forget how much I detest the eyes of others looking upon me as if they had any right to see or exist…"

The wolves began to fade away one by one, the Primera rejecting them as its lone wolf nature became more and more dominant. Zaraki rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck from side to side, gritting his teeth at the burning pain. This was no clean cut, the wound was a nasty chewed up mess.

"What're you grizzling on about rights for, fuckwit? There's no such thing as rights. I ain't gonna let a Hollow whine about rights when even the Whole souls don't got any. If yer don't want me to see how ugly you are, yer'll just have to tear my eyes out."

The monster twitched. "Deal." It lunged for him, he slammed the chainsaw into its face, heard Yachiru unleash a ghoulish laugh as blue-black blood splattered everywhere like boiling tar. And then the jagged blade fell straight through, the werewolf had become a ghost, slipping away from danger.

"Oi, Yachiru," growled the captain, his chest heaving. "I ain't a fan of short fights, but I'm gettin' sick of this guy. We got a flashy attack or anything?"

She giggled irrepressibly. _"Just-just…hahahaah…just shout 'Gamma Akutabi', Ken-chan!"_ His little mental image of her was hopping up and down in excitement, as if she'd been waiting for this moment her entire life.

His hands flexed on the chainsword's hilt, lips curled aggressively.

"GAMMA AKUTABI!" roared the Tenth Division Taicho, impatient to see the basic shinigami abilities that had always been denied him. The auburn flames that had wreathed him suddenly blinked out. He even felt a little weaker than before. The chainsaw itself hadn't changed at all.

"Fuck's sake Yachiru," he grumbled. "I get yer outta practice, but that's pathetic." His short temper reached the end of its tether, and he hurled the useless hunk of spiky metal overarm at the fiery Espada.

"_KEN-CHAN! I SPECIFICALLY TOLD YOU NOT TO DROP ME_!" bellowed the furious fukutaicho, intimidating even her unflappable leader.

He watched, mouth hanging uselessly open, as the chainsaw drilled straight through the Vasto Lorde from snout to tail, churning through bones and organs and formidable spiritual pressure; continued on its whirring flight path to the Shrine of Penitence, carved a deep rut into the formerly untouchable reiatsu-sapping stone, ripping out chunks of rock and clouds of dust, and slid down the side of the tower, screeching ear-splittingly against the dense marble blocks. It hit the building's foundations and continued to chew its way down to the centre of the earth, cutting a path through the ground as easily as falling through water.

"_It wasn't broken,"_ hissed Yachiru scathingly, mentally slapping her wielder upside the head. _"My shikai compresses all your energy into the zanpakuto and solidifies it, that's why you felt weaker! Fire looks cool, but it's just wasted offshoot reiatsu! Now look what you did, baka Ken-chan!"_

Empty-handed, Zaraki Kenpachi glanced back to the gored arrancar. The second Hollow hole he'd given it was infinitely bigger than the first. With no mouth, throat or lungs with which to rasp out any last words, the hellhound's body collapsed into a raging blue fireball. It expanded swiftly, as all-consuming as an atomic bomb, decimating the valley's boulders to sand, warping reality, tearing black Garganta holes in thin air; the shockwaves setting Zaraki's braids and shihakusho alight as they thundered past.

The air tasted thin and burnt afterwards, most of the oxygen seared away. The shinigami released his foothold on the sky, plummeting to the scorched ground. His breathing came in short gasps, sweat and blood drenched him, he felt utterly spent. Not even the energy to brace against impact with the earth. Kenpachi couldn't remember ever pushing himself so far before. He'd thought Yachiru would be a cheat, skipping all the hard work. But she'd driven him further than anything and wrung his reiatsu dry.

"Ken-chan?" peeped a voice by his ear. He cracked an eyelid open.

"Hey, that's good. Was worried yer'd stay a zanpakuto." Seeing her pink head bobbing around out the corner of his eye was inexplicably soothing and familiar.

"If we stayed like Lobo-chan, we'd be too mega-awesomely-powerful to walk through Seireitei! Ikky-kakky would nick your captain's spot, and I wouldn't be able to eat sweets anymore, and then you'd never bribe me into bankai! Ever!"

"Yer serious about that million sweets thing?"

"Oh yeah," Yachiru assured him devilishly. "And, and, and, Ken-chan, your sword's buried about a mile underground now. That'll teach you not to fling me around like a snowball."

Zaraki grumbled unintelligibly, aching in every atom of his body and far too obstinate to tell her to fetch Fourth Squad. "Oi…was that shrine like that before?"

She tilted her bubblegum head, and tilted it some more, and then some more. "Oops. We made it a Leaning Tower of Pizza."

"Ah crap… We'll just tell 'em it was like that before…Yeah."

"Aaah!" shrieked his tiny fukutaicho at full volume, hopping and pointing frantically at a will o' the wisp digging itself out of a distant sandpit. "There's one wolf left! It's an omega wolf! Ken-chan, look, look, look! Can I keep it as a pet? …Ken-chan?" She looked behind her, he was stone cold unconscious.

"Stoooopid…" she said quietly and fondly, hugging his uninjured shoulder.

Warmth touched the back of her neck as the remnant of Coyote sniffed her, and when she turned its blurry jaws fell open in a laughing manner, as if she was just so amusingly tasty.

"You'll behave right?" asked Yachiru with a dangerous spark in her ruby eyes. "Remember, if you bite me, you'll explode. Poof! No more Lobo-chan!"

The wolf's azure flames died down remarkably, and it yawned mournfully, affecting to look as if it had never once intended to eat her! It curled up near Zaraki's feet amicably, burying its nose under its blazing tail, perfectly peaceful. As if being a fragment of an already shattered soul had made two wrongs a right, and the Hollow had discarded such concepts as hunger and despair with its alpha's demise.

"I'm gonna fetch a medic," announced Yachiru to the air in general, and pointed a stern finger at her new pet. "Staaa-aaay. Stay! Good boy!"

**o)0(o**

"Two Espada have appeared near this area in Central Seireitei, Division One offices. Due to their targeted approach and high level we can assume this is the major branch of the invasion. I want Kuchiki-taicho, Soi Fon-taicho and Hitsugaya-taicho to spearhead this counterattack. Bear in mind I have selected you three as reliable captains capable of teamwork and efficiency."

Byakuya raised his head slightly higher, with an expression almost as frosty as Toushiro's. "All the battles mentioned until now are being fought between the newly-promoted, healers, low ranks and fools. I hope we can give better examples of how a dedicated and experienced captain fights."

"Do you have any further commentaries to enlighten us, former Espada Zero?" the Soutaicho asked of Karin somewhat deprecatingly, and she balked slightly at his tone. The two arrancars he had mentioned were disturbingly visible, in the far distance beyond the window. One, with her lemon yellow hair and dark skin, was easily identifiable against the cloudless sky.

"Hallibel is very proud." Karin pointed the rare female Hollow out, dredging through the vague memories of Tenebra Shirojos for anything that could give them an advantage. "She can create boiling water and control it. She's the Tres Espada. She's very strict and I think…she looked after me the most. Because you know, after they cut holes in my head, I couldn't exactly think for myself." Karin attempted to say it flippantly, but the words came out deeply bitter. However these fighters were elites, about to head to their deaths, and they had no time for her past traumas. She tried to distance herself, easier than one might think since the memories came to her like faded dreams, and soldiered on. "She never let anyone mess with me or her Fraccion. She would refuse to eat other Hollows unless Aizen forced her to, and she never once backed down from anyone else that I know of."

"And the other?"

The young Kurosaki stepped closer to the window, squinting hard, and suddenly felt sick to her very soul. She backed away automatically; unaware she was fleeing that which she had seen. Toushiro caught her arm with a look of alarm, the girl had paled, shivering and hyperventilating. The final Espada's chilling effect. A physical reaction learnt before death.

"In the name of Barragan Luisenbarn, King of Hueco Mundo…" recited the child in a voice as thin and brittle as spider silk. Her heart pounded frantically, remembering the heart attack that had killed her real body when he tore out her Chain of Fate. "He said I was a maggot, and the real world was disgusting, and before Aizen took over he ruled the desert. He hates me. He can walk through walls and rip people out of their bodies and when he fights he corrodes things, but not with acid or poison, it's like they simply wither away," babbled out the distraught girl. "He doesn't even need to touch them. But when he killed me he called it a King's Burial, with the hilt of his sword. It b-burned a hole right through…right through like paper…"

"None of this came up in the interrogations!" snapped Soi Fon. "Are we really meant to trust a child's judgements on these Espada when she's clearly been holding back information?"

Ukitake Jyuushiro, quickly stepping forwards into his unofficial role of Chief Diplomat, answered her soothingly. "Soi Fon, please remember that your interviews with her mostly revolved around, ah, 'post-mortem' questions. She's clearly talking about her actual death now, and that's very frequently forgotten by people! But what's all this about the hilt?"

"Like Soul Burial? Konsou?" asked Hitsugaya, looking with wide eyes at the most learned person in the room. "Is that even possible? Can we do the same to them?" The Soutaicho met his gaze grimly.

"That is a distressing ability," growled Yamamoto. "It takes the concept of an arrancar gaining shinigami powers a little too far. I want Ukitake and Shunsui in reserve, to deploy to whichever battlefield they see fit in no less than fifteen minutes. We must see how the situation develops before we reveal all our cards. All of you are dismissed, this meeting is over. Prove to these abysmal hybrids that they cannot compare to true shinigami, and protect this city from the Hollows!"

"What about this Neliel Espada, just arrived near Rukongai South?" asked a scout. "Reports state she was the ally of the Shinigami Substitute at the time of his rescue attempt."

"Friend or not, she could still be a threat. One momentary lapse into kindness doesn't mean Aizen will let her play as she pleases. If she was reported with amnesia, then the return of her memories equally can lead to the return of her cruelty. Send Shunsui to intercept her. We will keep Ukitake back as long as possible since his illness is a liability, and consider him my second-in-command as needed. Move out!"

"You stay in this room," Toushiro ordered Karin, gripping her shoulder to reinforce the command. "It's highly strengthened with kido. Do not under any circumstances go out to the battlefields."

When she glanced up, he was long gone. The room was busy with messengers and the odd fukutaicho running around, calling out reports and orders to each other. She perched on the chair, hugging her knees to her chest, praying beyond hope that none of the Espada would come after her again. She knew she was worthless now, but she'd made the mistake of thinking she was invisible to her brother's enemies before; and been defenceless when they came for her in the safety of her own house.

"Tell me," said the captain with long white hair, patting her shoulders. "How is it you know about their strategies so well? I can't imagine they'd be very vocal about their powers."

Karin regarded him with tired eyes, seeming to age a hundred years. It was some time before she spoke.

"Ever since I…ever since Tenebra Shirojos killed Ichi-nii, Aizen-sama…Aizen decided we were all too weak, that his infiltration never should have got so far even if they had been toying with him all along. He was saying 'What's the value in soldiers that can't fulfil the simple tasks I set? How will an arrancar who lets a simple ryoka best him hold up against trained captains?' all the time. Heh, we weren't 'Dear Espada' anymore. But Hollows can't just practise till they get stronger. They have to eat other Hollows. So we would go under the sands, every day, every night, for hours and hours. They'd tell the Gillians to herd every living thing for miles around to us, and we'd just massacre them over and over."

Jyuushiro sat down beside her and held out his arms in an embrace. "How scary that must have been for you. The times are becoming harsh, hm? It's a real miracle that you're safe again now."

Giving in to her moping, Karin crawled onto the captain's lap and hid behind the shelter of his billowing white sleeves. "It's been a difficult road that we don't know where it leads, mmm?" continued Ukitake softly, patting her head.

"It wasn't difficult. As long as they could prod me into fighting, it was easy." She swallowed hard, felt the stiff red collar round her throat shift. She could still remember the tastes and textures, afraid to admit it aloud in case the memories were made more real. The addictive sensation, for a Hollow, not of being satisfied by gorging upon their fellows; but with every bite the fleeting hope that it would sate their inhuman hunger. It was the false scent of hope in that hopeless dimension that enthralled them. "It was a _feast_."

Ukitake felt a chill down his spine. Was it really an innocent twelve-year-old in his arms?

"But 'His Majesty' over there plays with his food, right? He used to tell them the last one to survive was free to go, and eat the winner." The child's voice was sarcastic and hostile. "Barragan said he was still the King, and not even Starrk or Gin or Tousen or Aizen could harm him. I can't sense their spirits anymore, but they'll be so much stronger than before, because they've been eating ever since."

Yamamoto had watched silently as Isshin's daughter grew ever more confident with speaking of her past, and unintentionally accepting of the ruthless evil she once embodied. The cannibalism that should have made her nauseous had evidently become second nature.

"How much stronger?"

"Ahh…" hummed the unsettling girl, eyes distant. "I'm not sure how to count it, never got near my limits…but they could of munched up half the souls in Hueco Mundo by now…dunno."

The Soutaicho stood up abruptly, the ground trembling at his every step. "I am heading out to the front, in case these kids forget how to keep their heads attached to their necks." He growled. "Jyuushiro. I leave things in your care."

"My my, leaving the poorly one to hold the fort," murmured Ukitake, passing Karin a wrapped sweet and popping one into his mouth. Maybe the sugar would counteract her dark sense of humour. "So how's it feel to have Shiro-chan as your valiant white knight, Karin-chan? Perhaps he'll avenge your murder, but I daresay Ichigo-kun would get jealous if he did."

The youngest Kurosaki stared through the thin sheet of glass; all that stood between her and the demon king that had once dragged her to limbo.

"I wish I had a Caja Negacion to hide in," she muttered miserably to herself. Tears prickled her eyes, always threatening to fall in her unguarded moments. "I wish none of this ever happened to me. I wish I knew nothing about it. I wish Ichi-nii was here..."

And so quietly even she couldn't hear it; her unconscious feelings whispered their presence.

"I wish I could fight..."

**o)0(o**

With as much information as they could gather from all those who had previously entered Hueco Mundo, the Captains approached their targets and steeled themselves for bloody warmongering.

At South Rukongai, Shunsui scratched his beard idly. It was a bright, chilly day, a lovely day for shivering in gardens and drinking heated sake. And what else but the threat of annihilation was preventing him from indulging in such pleasantries…

"Hello there!" called out the captain cheerfully, in the hopes that this 'Nel' would be as innocuous as she sounded in Ichigo's descriptions.

The green-haired woman looked up at him, a bold red stripe across the bridge of her nose like warpaint, and the aurochs skull on her head looking like a promise of what she'd turn him into. Her eyes were taupe, clear and solemn, and her figure was very flattering (though he would never admit such a thing out loud, of course, Nanao-chan would murder him for fraternising with the enemy).

"I am the Fifth Espada, Neliel Tu Oderschvank," declared the arrancar without hesitation. "I warn you now that this is only the very tip of our invasion. There will be countless horrors and entities unleashed upon you in the near future." Her sudden glare was deadly.

"So I hear, so I hear," replied Kyoraku warmly, his cheer losing a little of its shine. That didn't sound like an extended hand of peace at all.

"You will know true terror when, for example, our rear guard goes directly to Karakura," added the enemy meaningfully.

Shunsui began rooting through the large pockets hidden in his flowery kimono for something.

"And that ryoka fool who invaded our palace had better not think we've forgotten about him. It's no trouble to locate someone as oozy as him, even if he's resurrected from the dead. He will be hunted down until he stays in the grave where he belongs. Mwahahahaa!" she laughed unconvincingly, and then winked.

Kyoraku located the object he had been seeking and pulled off his straw hat. Located in its peak were two conical sake cups he kept there for emergencies. "I hear people who are terrible liars like yourself are also fond of sake."

Nel beamed, delighted. "You have some? It's a great day for it izzinit; there's no lovely scenery like this in booooring Hueco Mundo." She sat down right in the middle of a flowerbed and held her hand out for the booze. "So how's Itsygo been?"

"Itsygo? What an adorable nickname. I wonder if I can convince everyone to call him that next time he visits." He poured her a cup of alcohol with the elegance born of centuries of practice, and passed it over. "I'm afraid it's not at the optimum temperature, and I have no sweets on me..."

"I'll survive," declared Neliel stoically. "I am a masochist after all."

What a charming arrancar she was, mused Shunsui, not unnerved _at all_.

**o)0(o**

"Here is the new frontier of my empire. A king need not stop at a single dimension. After conquering the legions of Hueco Mundo what can mere humans do to prevent my dominion? Behold this soaring sky, behold this sun that outshines the moon a thousand times over. The ceiling of my second palace. I have no need of walls to inhibit my view of my kingdom."

"If you cannot comprehend that invasion is a social faux pas, you have no right to talk of monarchy and rule," snapped out the well-bred voice of the Shinigami Gazette's _'all about etiquette'_ column author.

"What is this?" laughed Barragan, a mocking and smug sound: the laugh of an undisputed god. "The first of my new slaves comes to kneel before me."

"I have only once been forced to dip my knee to another, and the attempt very nearly cost him his life." Byakuya drew his sword, the steel chiming against the scabbard. "It is the duty of a true noble to teach you the error of your boasts, Hollow."

The weathered man's deeply tanned skin crinkled as he smiled ever so contemptuously. "Ah, now, a little amusement at last. I may even fight you myself. You do claim to be so distinguished."

"You grace me with such honour," replied the Head of the Noble Kuchiki Clan in a perfectly expressionless voice.

The Secunda Espada grimaced, the thick white moustache bunching as his wrinkles collided into deep ravines. "Pay your respects whilst you still can, maggot. Nothing can hold sway over the implacable march of time."

There was a quiet rustle of fabric on fabric, as the Soutaicho passed behind them and took his measured paces, digging his worn sandals into empty air, moving with silent purpose towards his target. It was not for them to question why he ignored the self-proclaimed king of his sworn enemies, but still, the captains couldn't help wondering.

Evidently Barragan Luisenbarn felt a similar slight. "Entertain them," he grunted to his attendants, tilting a grizzled head in the direction of the three captains.

Lifting a colossal battle-axe in one deeply tanned hand, he hefted it over his shoulder with all the nonchalance of a Viking chieftain. "It seems you are the same rude old bastard I always assumed you were, Yamamoto Genryuusai-Shigekuni. Why show more interest in that deviant female than in your only contemporary?"

The Commander-General did not pause, turn nor acknowledge the reprimand.

"You do not have the right to ignore me," meted out the oldest Espada.

He finally stopped. "I think little of a leader who hides behind others. And I do not fear your time, for I have always been old. I plan to fight her." The long-bearded man pointed out Tia Hallibel, who waited in the distance. "I did not think you would mind."

"_We_, as the two kings of the two afterlives, should be the ones to battle each other."

Toushiro, the youngest of the captains, had never seen his superior smile before, and shivered despite his resistance to the cold. The Soutaicho smiled like a lion baring its fangs. "You may do so, after my knight, bishop and queen have been defeated."

"Hypocrisy." _They did not see the monster move._ "I am easily bored," described King Barragan Luisenbarn as he suddenly snatched the Commander up by the throat, interrogating him with cold eyes. "I could split my kingdom in two and hold sway over a civil war, but it grew tiresome the hundredth time and left all my distractions dead. In _millennia_, the only one to make a ripple in the afterlife was you, with your little toy village, and your adoring little sacrificial lambs. And so I let you play, to slake my boredom, and claw and scrabble for your pathetic hopes of winning a round or two of this game." His fist tightened, his victim only watched impassively.

"It dragged on for two thousand years, but I finally found my new toy. Your traitor. It amazes me you never understood. You were never even a _player_. Only a _**plaything**_. I'd thank you for allowing me the sentiment, but all things are ancient and worthless to me now."

The dull white crown on the King of Hueco Mundo's head drifted closer. His voice was deep and dark and merciless.

**"I could have killed you with a sigh all along, you pathetic child."**

And his breath was poison-black, a deep violet mist curling out from the grimacing mouth. The Soutaicho flinched back but could not avoid it, and wherever it touched he could feel his flesh withering, his long white beard becoming ash, his bones crumbling with age.

"_**Your living body rotted long ago. It should be easy for you to die."**_

In the background of the tableau of two kings, three captains were panicking, fighting manically to get past their Fraccion opponents and reach their fading leader.

_**Who crushed all of Hueco Mundo to sand? It was I.  
Dust to dust.  
Ash to ash.**_

_**.**_

_**.**_

_**.**_

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

Soi Fon: Yamamoto-sama called me a queen! *blush* Like Yoruichi-sama!  
Byakuya: _Need_ we take it literally?  
Toushiro: You can be the bishop, Byakuya-san. I'll be the knight. I'm arguably a dragoon after all.  
Byakuya: Ouch. Please do not attempt to make puns within my earshot again.

**o)0(o**

Zaraki: Thank you fer reading…I'm confused, is this a Japanese Samurai Stalemate, Mexican Standoff, a Wild West Showdown or Russian Roulette?  
Lilynette: We were going for the spaghetti western style, so…  
Yachiru: Wait, pasta? Italian shootout?  
Coyote: …Just…never mind…  
Yachiru: French impasse?  
Coyote: Seriously?  
Yachiru: Chinese takeaway?  
Lilynette: What?  
Zaraki: Man, that makes me hungry. Let's go eat some donuts, Yachiru.  
Coyote and Lilynette: The chapter title was CHECKMATE, you idiots!

**o)0(o**

Jyuushiro: How do you know them so well? I can't imagine they'd-

Karin: Well you know what I _thought_ it was odd at the time! Like every half an hour Gin would pull out this massive projector and a pointer stick and start reeling off information about everyone! He called it the Arrancar Encyclopaedia, and I still don't have a clue who he thought he was telling it to. The guy is a _nutcase_!

Jyuushiro: O…oh…well that's not quite what I was expecting…

Karin: *_stare_* Hope you weren't waiting for me to be angsty. Angst bores me to tears. I get enough of it with Ichi-nii's constant 'high spec' moods…

Jyuushiro: *sweats* N-not at all, who me? Aha. Ha. Have some more sweets.

**o)0(o**

_**Author's Note: **Wow. An eight month delay. I am so sorry, and thank you for still reading. Well the last NaNoWriMo completely failed, so this month I'm going to give my brain a break from writing the Hollow Invasion (I spent a long time trying, at least), and write a Batman filmverse fanfiction. If you would like to read it, it's called Cirque d'Alegria on my profile and follows on from Dark Knight. _

_Last chapter, (last year!) I put a picture of Zaraki's shikai up and asked if anyone knew the reference. Zira-Shion was the only person to guess correctly!_

_Kubo's first published manga was called Zombie Powder (never finished, like a certain fanfic I could mention…) and the main character Gamma Akutabi wields an extremely badass chainsaw. So I thought it made a pretty nice tribute.  
_

**o)0(o**


	43. Indomitus

**Hell Butterfly**

**Indomitus**

**~43~**

**o)0(o**

The desert ruler breathed out lightly, heavily, an ominous zephyr. Dark oily mists coiled into the space between their two gnarled faces, wrapping cloyingly around the head of Soul Society. Wherever they touched, the patriarch began to decay, regardless of his unmatched reiatsu that should have shielded him from almost any attack.

Skin flaked away; stubborn muscles clung to skeleton until they too crumbled into sand, bones clacked together as their ligaments frayed like old string.

"Humour me," gritted out Yamamoto, half of his face shedding itself, ribs and one arm flayed down to the very marrow. The pain was bizarre, so vicious yet so fleeting; seeming more a remembrance of agony than an actual sensation. "Kill those captains who trusted me so blindly, before I suffer the ignominy of them watching me die."

"A proud loser, are you? A true king!" snarled the fell king of Hueco Mundo, raising his other hand and the jewelled battle-axe therein. At his signal the Fraccions halted and stepped back from their captain opponents. He allowed his lowly counterpart to drop to the floor, turned away with no need to confirm the old man's death. "I waited all these aeons for you to regale me, and you couldn't even _struggle_."

**o)0(o**

Soi Fon watched her leader rot away before her very eyes, and pursed her lips slightly.

Well, it was not the first time the world had been ripped out from under her feet, and all normality thrown to the winds.

Kuchiki and Hitsugaya were taking too long to react, so she took the initiative, pointing behind her back with one finger at herself, two at Kuchiki, and three at youngest captain. That was now the chain of command. And then she vanished.

Barragan was still dropping Yamamoto's corpse on the floor when Suzumebachi pierced his back. A black _homonka_ butterfly unfurled its wings across his heavy white coat, marking her second target with the hornet's crest. The god-king turned, scowling, slashing his axe across the space she no longer occupied.

"These sealed forms are inconvenient," he grumbled; "allowing you to scratch me."

The little wasp was nowhere to be seen, she had concealed herself somehow, drawing a curtain of thin air around herself to distort his gaze.

The captains fought him, bereaved, insulted; that he could have unmade the old commander they both respected and feared with such a paucity of effort.

The Kuchiki who had challenged him previously made the next move, lunging forwards in a torrent of glittering cherry blossoms, a hurricane of razorblades. And as the kaleidoscope of metal shards distracted him, once again the little woman's gauntlet stung him, and pain he had long forgotten the feel of crawled out from the wound, as if a hornet's larvae were eating through his spine. It was such a surprise he did not think to deflect the oncoming attack. Pink petals became edged in red, leaving shallow gashes all over his face and arms. The arrancar groaned in agony, the floodgates of his anger breaking wide open.

"Rot," hissed the arrancar; "Arrogante." He tilted his axe towards the petals, its ruby gleaming, and unleashed his Resurrección.

The flowers withered in mid-air, every last one rusting away into dark brown dust. Senbonzakura disintegrated; countless elegant blades of death suddenly a feeble, hopeless sandstorm that whipped harmlessly past the true form of the monster.

"Next is your vanity," chuckled the lich, the bone crown now intricate gold; the face now not a mask, but a skull exposed and fleshless. "Then your assumed survival. They will all bow before _Senescencia_."

"You will beg for mercy!" swore Byakuya, made furious in his hatred and shock. His cherished zanpakuto dust in the wind, ferrous grains of iron.

"No. No. You're simply too weak. Too dull. My Fraccions will dance with you. I shall wait in hopes of better quality prey."

The pawns leapt forth eagerly, striking out at full strength.

**And the world went**___**FWOOMPH**__._

For a moment there was nothing but orange and heat and ravenous fire. Deafening, scorching, blinding, until it flashed out like the briefest strike of a match.

None had heard him cry bankai, but the Fraccions had been cremated and the commander was curiously whole in body.

"Enough," laughed the Soutaicho humourlessly; "Enough! I have not been clear with you. It is not that I underestimated, or wished to snub you. I only wanted to prove to you that it was what I had built, not just myself; that could defeat you and your miserable kingdom."

Barragan Luisenbarn turned, the white skull tipping to one side; the splayed white fingers rising in the surprise his face could no longer display.

"Do you think a phoenix cares for the march of time? Your so called Senescencia is naught more than a laughing stock to him!"

"WHO!" roared the mad monarch. "WHO CAN DEFY THE LAW OF NATURE? EVERYTHING DIES!"

"It seems for all our long rivalry on either side of this board, we have never been introduced. Let me, and let Ryuujin Jakka educate you then, you hopeless little shred of a soul too timid to move on; everything dies, and everything is also reborn! Did you think I feared age? That I feared death? That I had never known decay? That time terrified me? Did you think a phoenix could die even if you killed it a thousand times? You called yourself the true god of death, and the death of gods. There is only one master of death, who has fully embraced it, and that is Ryuujin Jakka. You may as well try to extinguish the sun by spitting at it, as try to crush I who have his support!"

"You survive a whisper, and believe you've gained amnesty from oblivion? Naïve!" The eldritch creature lifted its pitch-black axe, the blades now like dark wings, clinking golden chains dripping opulence. "This land and their lives that once were yours…are now mine. The stronghold of the reapers lays as open as a treasure casket at my feet."

"Should I be impressed, and cower at your achievements? You took a barren land and turned it into a cold desert. I took a barren land and turned it into a city! What a fearsome power you have, to make all you behold worthless. How I tremble before such a king! How jealous I am! I know you have tired of your dull, empty existence, so make a wager with me, Barragan. Gamble with our domains! I say these barely-born children can spit in the eye of your fate! How do you answer?"

"I answer with Gran Caida," scraped the dead voice of the dead king. "I say _Respira,_ and may your little maggots die at peace with the blind faith that ended them."

Soi Fon went on the offensive, calling out her bankai without a single thought towards its cumbersome nature. Soifon spat at the far-distant ground, and fired off a blast not unlike the distant cousin of an atomic bomb.

Hitsugaya watched in awe the completely unsubtle torpedo blast at the Secunda Espada, finally understanding why he had never seen her bankai. It was completely opposite to her stealthy tastes. Yet, of course, the God-King of Hueco Mundo no longer had flesh for her to poison.

"Time is inexorable," rasped the living skeleton, heavy golden chains and armbands adorning its wrists and axe, chiming as it shook with lungless laughter. "Even reiatsu fades."

The bolt of energy sputtered like a dying firework, inches from the monster's hand.

"You are not gods," mocked the god-king with tongueless speech, looking down on them with eyeless sockets, casting their bankais aside with fleshless hands. "How will you dare defeat me? Can you make bone bleed? Can you cut my absent heart out? Can you kill time before it degrades you?"

Hitsugaya gritted his teeth and sent a fountain of ice crashing upon the glorified hollow. The reiatsu died out, but the water still hit.

"How...refreshing. In ten thousand years of sand, I forgot my insatiable thirst."

Toushiro rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Bankai, Daiguren Hyourinmaru." Wings snapped open on either shoulder, an ice serpent roared. "Sorry, but I don't fear your time."

"You _are_ amusing," gloated his opponent. "Are you hoping I'll make you look older? Stay still, if I am very careful, perhaps I can make you taller."

The tiny captain was quite suddenly gripped by apoplectic rage. "RAGGGHHHHHHH!"

A glacier engulfed the Hollow, crackling loudly as the ice settled. Byakuya, Soi Fon and Yamamoto all stared in disbelief at their youngest member.

"Was that a little too close to the truth?" remarked the short woman, as the two men hid their amusement.

The ice started to hiss, steam, break apart in huge chunks and flumes of boiling water. Hitsugaya stared at it in alarm, trying to bring his spiritual pressure down to bear upon it once again. What was causing this?

The glacier became a superheated geyser, blasting into the sky and wriggling away in a snake of water, curling around the shoulders of the enigmatic third Espada, Tia Hallibel.

"Don't steal my water!" barked Hitsugaya, trying to summon it back to him, but it was bubbling, broiling, disobedient.

The King of Hueco Mundo emerged in a cloud of steam, the ice evaporating from his bare bones and sodden fur-trimmed cloak. "I did not need your help," bit out the clattering jaw, the worn teeth. "Even the ice caps will melt eventually. Do not pretend to gain my favour by interfering in my fight!"

Hallibel did not even look at him, her body language derisive. She had not yet unsheathed her sword, arms folded moodily across her bare stomach. She was controlling the water without a single gesture.

"What aid would I give to a king with a broken crown?" was all she said in her low, clear voice. Fixing the Soutaicho with a challenging green-eyed stare, she drew her strange hollow sword with deliberate slowness.

"If you have grown bored of hiding behind your cannon fodder disciples, then face me, Commander Yamamoto."

"You have confidence do you?"

"I have reason," she said steadfastly. "Those three shinigamis all told me you uphold the justice of the world, that you built this whole civilisation up from the mud, that you are the one who corralled us in that wasteland. You abandoned us and left our souls to warp, made us into animals and demons! And you called the Spirit King who no one has ever seen God, and forced everyone to follow your religion! When the reaper cults give human sacrifices to the whimsy of their gods, it's all in your name, isn't it?"

She struck out at him with her words, a savage attack from a naturally stoic and silent woman.

"Tell me your world's justice: that I was consigned to Hell, just because you once chose to call me a Minus!"

"Azul," she said, and a ribbon of lemon-yellow light unwound from the empty centre of her blade. It lashed out and struck his staff away from his hand, flinging it far away. "We will fight somewhere you needn't worry about Barragan breathing at you again."

"This is how those traitors drum you up for war?" asked the tired, steely old man in his thick black robes of mourning.

"This is not a war."

Not war. Not the tired old staking of territories, the dog-and-rat hunts in the No Man's Land between dimensions. No longer the daily battle for survival, not revolutions that go in circles and never change a thing, to maintain the delicate status quo laughably called normality.

But a desperate, violent lurch towards change.

The Espada glowed with resolution, reiatsu shining out of her skin, leaning forward keenly, poised for battle.

"This is a paradigm shift."

Barragan Luisenbarn laughed. "Our fight can wait. I want to watch him kill her."

The three captains, who would usually never back down from a challenge, exchanged worried looks and agreed. They would use the time to devise a strategy, assuming the female arrancar lasted more than ten seconds against their Commander-General.

Not to mention they were all relatively young, none more than two hundred years old. They had never seen Yamamoto, the two thousand year old behemoth of a man, go all out before. They were watching in avid fascination, unable to help themselves.

**o)0(o**

"Hallibel-sama!" cried her three Fraccions. They had been shielded from the earlier firestorm by Hallibel's power, and now they were eager to repay the debt. "Let us bring Wonderwice here! It's his whole purpose!"

"I want nothing to do with that shell of an experiment. This is not Aizen's battle, it is mine. I will crush the injustice of that shinigami's world with my own hands!"

"At least let us help you!" Apache begged her, with an Amazonian desperation to have some part in the battle, some inch of control over this war.

"You'll barely survive watching from the side lines as it is." Their leader dismissed their pleas.

"Surely Allon could…" grumbled Mila Rose.

Tia unzipped her cropped jacket, baring vicious shark jaws and her number of rank at them. "You think your pet even compares to me? !"

**o)0(o**

A single flash step reunited the Soutaicho with his staff, and he examined the damage done to its casing with a huff. The 'azul' had burnt away some of the wooden exterior, exposing the unmarked zanpakuto underneath. He clenched it tight in both fists, allowing the rest of the veneer to disappear as he decided how to deal with the Hollow who called for equality.

Tia Hallibel's senses were pin-sharp. Due to her secretive nature no one in or out of Hueco Mundo was really sure of her fighting methods, weaknesses, or strengths. Unless she showed her cluster of fangs, no one even considered that she might be a cold blooded, ruthless hunter.

The enemy's reiastu was simmering, considering shikai. He had already shown regeneration capabilities that she'd believed only arrancars could achieve, and being the undisputed leader of Soul Society for two thousand years only strengthened the impression that she would lose.

But a shinigami's power came from that mysterious bond with their swords. Not a sealed power, but an additional partner adding to their might. Destroy the sword, and the shinigami would surely be crippled.

And she would have to fight carefully, conserving her prodigious strength to outlast his limitless reiatsu, never letting him fear her enough to unleash the full inferno hidden in his blade.

Her skin tightened, he was considering a swift end. His hands were on the hilt.

She struck from the side, hooking her coreless sword onto his scabbard as she flipped past, kicking off against him with sonido to wrench it out of his grip for the second time. Another Azul Cero flared from her blade, battering the sword until the sheath cracked and flames leaked out.

"That was a poor choice," said the Commander-General with sympathy.

It was blazing within seconds, melting the metal of her weapon, leaving deep kinks where the blades met. Summoning the icy water she had stolen from Hitsugaya, she quenched the shinigami's sword in a billow of steam; then fired the scalding water back at her opponent. As he brushed the boiling torrent aside, she flickered to her rival Espada's side.

"Is it true that you cannot kill a phoenix?" she jibed, tossing the sword towards her self-proclaimed monarch.

"The first tribute from my new kingdom. Fitting enough," mocked the skeletal king, swinging Gran Caida in a wide arc that severed the zanpakuto in two. It fragmented into sand.

"You misunderstand the true form of a zanpakuto. I can resummon Ryuujin Jakka at will," scoffed the Soutaicho, almost amused by her lack of knowledge; clapping his knobbly hands together and drawing them apart to reveal the sword, unsheathed, ready to kill. Tia was instantly in front of him.

"Show me your true form, Hollow, or this fight will be pitifully unfair."

Hallibel lifted her chin slightly, in challenge or agreement. Water gushed from her imitation zanpakuto, enveloping her, a heart shaped fountain seething and bubbling. A vast white lance like a shark's tooth slit the curtain of waterfall apart, unveiling her true form. And her true face.

"You will not live much longer," he promised her gravely. "You should say your last words now."

"I will not fall against someone who knows nothing of sacrifice!" cried the woman bravely, her bare face displaying blue lightning streaks across the cheekbones and fierce resolve.

Genryuusai shook his head slowly. "I only place value in meaningful sacrifices. Among Hollows there is no meaning."

"This is the only time Hueco Mundo's sacrifice has ever been for a cause," spat the shark. "Aizen told me to imagine a future without sacrifices or the death of my comrades! Without me, who else in this world will protect them? !"

"I feel almost sad to see you die," muttered the ruler. "How did such passion ever fall so low?"

"Because of you," she hissed intensely, charging at him.

His firebolts were met with waterbullets, her Ceros with kido, his swordplay was parried, her hand-to-hand combat rejected. They exchanged searing water and spitting flames until a dense fog surrounded them both.

But Tia's eyes and senses were the sharpest. And the jaws of a shark are the most powerful in the world.

She took some older, primordial form composed of the volcanic heat that spews from vents on the ocean floor, the scalding water that can skin a person alive, and the sharp, triangular, jagged teeth of her discarded mask, snapping and clashing and regrowing teeth as fast as they could shatter against the Soutaicho's bleeding fists and gouged body. Shark attacks that thud into the target and rip off limbs.

Their audience stared in mesmerised horror as the murk cleared, and Genryuusai swayed, bloodsoaked. Hallibel was back to normal, and darting around firing disconcerting arrays of bright yellow ceros. She moved freely in all directions like a fish in water, not treating the sky like a flat plane like the majority of others did, but taking full advantage of a terrain without hindrances.

"I have never seen Hallibel-sama fight like that," gasped Sun Sun, shaken.

"We have never seen her fight _willingly_," corrected Apache, eyes thrilled.

"She never used to kill or eat other Hollows, only chase them off, until Aizen came." Mila Rose recalled, harkening back to their interlocked pasts.

"Ryuujin Jakka," snorted the old man, wiping blood from his knuckles off on his dirtied beard. "Matryoshka."

Faster than she could outrun them, vast pinions of fire like phoenix wings enclosed their battlefield, trapping her in a sphere of hot fiery doom. She tried dousing them or drilling through with water to no avail. And they began to constrict. She turned immediately to the Soutaicho, planning to submerge and drown him before his net snared her, at least to force a bubble of water down his lungs and choke him. But there was another great ball of fire there too, shielding him from all contact, and expanding as fast as its bigger brother shrank.

Inevitable doom crawled down her spine, and she drew a globe of water around herself in the scant hope it would save her.

They constricted, and expanded, and crushed her bubble of safety, and scorched her to her very bones. When the raging vapours and smoke cleared, there was nothing left. She had utterly perished.

Yamamoto bowed his head in respect to a proud opponent, and sent a brief prayer to the Hell Butterflies or who knew what deity, to lead that soul safely back to a peaceful Plus life someday.

Barragan threw back his cranium and laughed till his ribs rattled.

**o)0(o**

"The only thing that suggests he is not omnipotent is that he has not succumbed to his own power," said Kuchiki Byakuya, unable to keep the ill-suited scowl off his usually serene face. Senbonzakura's defeat seemed to have shaken him deeply, this was now a grudge match rather than a thing of duty or survival. "He has a safe zone in which the Senescencia does not touch him. It is the same as my – as any other fighter, one's weapon must not damage oneself or it is useless."

"Then there is a way to enter it," stated Soi Fon. "If it is the same as your bankai, what are the requirements to enter it?"

Although it was unusual for any shinigami to simply declare the aces up their sleeves, he could tell by her sharp stare that this was not the time to be coy and protect his weaknesses. "In essence, you need only be very swift, very smart, or very stubborn to pass my barrier."

Soi Fon smiled piercingly. "Luckily I am all three."

"For him, however… His powers simply hang around him, they are not directed and finite like my blades so recently are."

"If blunt attacks are to be considered useless," spoke up the pale genius suddenly, showing his strategic mind; "then we need to also consider technicality kills. Despite their rarity."

"If he had not discarded all his internal organs voluntarily, Suzumebachi would likely have killed him. But even she can't kill a thing that is thrice dead already."

"There are certain kido that mimic the 'technicality' you speak of," murmured Byakuya.

"Forbidden, top level, usually lethal, Watcher's Seat kido," added Soi Fon, still giving Byakuya that same fierce stare.

"Risks are not absolutes," was all he said in reply, carelessly promising to match her dangerous task pace for pace. It seemed the time for measured precision was over.

"That'll give us time to think, but it won't kill him. But you know, there's one more thing he has been unable to grasp within his all-powerful hands," said Hitsugaya in a frigid voice. Fire blazed beside them and Barragan laughed till his bones rattled: the Commander's battle was already over.

"And what is that?" asked the dread king, right in the centre of their group. "Your time is _up_," he leered, clutching for them with bare ivory hands as they scattered, faces white with fear. "What is it I cannot corrode? What is beyond my power? There is no such thing."

"The sky," shouted Toushiro, clutching desperately for more time to think, to plan. "The city is crumbling at your feet but I haven't seen you even touch the sky!"

This gave the lich pause, and he treated the childish slur as if it were no small matter. "The sky? It is distant, and utterly beyond anyone's power…"

Toushiro bared his teeth in a harsh smile, because Hyourinmaru was the guardian of the sky and as such it was not beyond _his_ power. But whether it was a power he could control was an entirely different matter. Karin's words rang mockingly in his memory, _are you only guarding it because you can't accidentally break it?_

"The sky stands above us all, immutably. It is idiocy to fight the sky, yet that is the only enemy still eluding me," mused the King of Hollows. "…But I have been learning how to hurt it." He stood slightly apart from them and tipped his skull back, and suddenly the air was crackling with thunder and raw lightning around him, a storm of deep violet reiatsu seeping out from his marrow, a vast Cero dark as a black hole coalescing around the skeleton. It completely obscured him, and the three captains leapt upon their unexpected chance.

"Senbonzakura Kageyoshi," declared Byakuya, sinking his rust-brown zanpakuto into the earth far below them, where it was interred and reborn anew in bankai. For a moment, it seemed like an entire orchard was blooming out of the ground, and then the canopy of petals was flying up and at the enemy, who was too utterly focused to even send out his passive aging aura.

The dark matter did not rust them, but it swallowed them all like the stars in the night sky blinking out of sight.

The Kuchiki noble twitched with anger, that for the fourth time his sword had been overcome by an opponent, and that his own failures seemed to reflect weakness and immaturity upon his majestic zanpakuto spirit. But with a true warrior's concentration, he moved straight back into his original plan, and began to recite the twisting lyrics of a long-forgotten kido spell.

"No mind, no thoughts, no harm. No self, no surety, no harm. No face, no heart, no harm. The legion that devours itself and is thus consumed by no others. The menace that discarded itself and is thus led by others. The bleached gloves that carve black gates into blue sky. The white boots that march to no destination. The blank spines that gore the strangers that march beside. The death mask and the dark cloak, the death knell and the dark choke. The only ray of hope in emptiness, the light that is untouchable and cannot touch."

He hesitated, feeling a deep pain in his heart; his hands shook as if fearful. He took a deep breath and continued, speaking as clearly as he could past cramping lungs.

"No movement, no action, no harm. No speech, no thirst, no harm." This demon magic was one of the first, the oldest, cumbersome and volatile. There were many verses until its completion, as it was fledgling magic that tried to draw out of the chanter powers that should never reside within them whilst they were whole.

"Hitsugaya-taicho," muttered Soi Fon. "If you have something he can't nullify, use it. I don't care if you kill us all, just stop him. We are not fighting for survival or pride tonight. We are fighting for a greater cause beside ourselves. Not for the Commander but for all Soul Society. I will not see our city become a desert."

Toushiro stared down at his steel blade, such a simple object. There was an ice age brimming within it, a force of nature greater than he had ever dared tell. "You would rather see it become a winter tundra?"

"Don't flatter yourself," smirked the ninja, but the boy wasn't smiling.

"What's the value of a guardian weaker than what it protects? Hyourinmaru is the Guardian of the Heavens, Soi Fon. I'm only young, I'm inexperienced. I've never used his full strength before. I know I've always held back too much. But I am afraid of him. I'm afraid he could crush this land as easily as that arrancar could if he wasn't toying with us."

"If it gets to that extreme," replied the leader of the Secret Forces blandly, as if he should have realised the solution already; "slit your throat, and sever Hyourinmaru's link to this world."

Toushiro looked like a child in her eyes for the first time, apprehensive and downcast, but her childhood had been merely an accessory to the Shihouin family's whim since birth, and she thought nothing of the burden. "Just because we're ageless, doesn't mean we should be immortal."

"I'm trying to say, this could trigger a natural disaster," he insisted.

"Yes," responded Soi Fon. "So don't wait for nature to do it for you. We are _all_ putting our lives on the line."

Hitsugaya gazed at his zanpakuto a moment longer, almost falling into Jinzen meditation, and thought about the 'treasure' he had sworn to protect, and whether that one small soul of one small girl was enough to see him through this war.

_Watch your enemy,_growled Hyourinmaru. _Do not allow him to scratch my sky._

Toushiro sighed, and there was frost on his breath. "Tenso Jurin."

"Weather manipulation?" questioned the Squad Two captain, gazing at the thick rain-drenched clouds now swirling across the clear sky, blotting the sun out of sight.

"This may kill everything within ten miles," warned the boy, glowing with shivery energy.

"My special forces began evacuation the moment the invasion began."

Hitsugaya almost relaxed then, but then he remembered Karin, defenceless, only human, was much closer than that, and they had commanded her not to move. And finally he found the resolve to not only unleash this monstrosity of a power, but master it.

The storm clouds crawled nearer, interweaving, casting shadows across the deserted city.

But they were like sunrays compared to the black Cero encasing Barragan Luisenbarn. Raising Gran Caida upon high, he condensed the bleak reiatsu to a pinprick suspended over the peaks of the double-headed axe. The strange Gran Rey Cero shot upwards like a bullet from a gun, leaving a vacuum in its wake as it dragged everything in the vicinity up with it, shattering the buildings below and leaving the fighters to suffocate as the air itself was sucked away.

It exploded, spreading outwards in all directions and rippling through Toushiro's thunderstorm, searing the atmosphere until it was dry and empty. Then the great ring shockwave collapsed, imploded, pulling all the shredded clouds into its centre where they vanished, leaving a strange heat-wave haze in the sky as if the fabric of reality had been warped, scraps of shadow drifting high above like the ghosts of the ozone layer.

The sun shone brilliantly, safe out in space, but the Earth was not so safe from the ants crawling across its surface.

"Perhaps that will scar the sky," grinned the Secunda Espada. No matter what befell, he could _only_ grin in the face of all that existence had offered him. "Now I have given you ample time, and you squalling babes are still not ready to entertain me?"

**o)0(o**

Soi Fon saw Kuchiki, ashen, struggling to complete the kido chant that was near ripping him in half with every word, and Hitsugaya, robbed of all sense by horror, talking to himself helplessly. _All water is my weapon, the heavens are under my command – why is there no water in the sky? !_

She had to buy time.

She lunged straight for the danger zone.

"_Respira,_" sighed Luisenbarn, bored. But some blur pushed the woman from its path, screaming as their foot dissolved, and finally the arrancar leaned forward in interest.

"What are you doing? !" yelled Soi Fon, flinging her rescuer away. It was one of the Secret Police, clutching his rotting leg, crying out in agony.

"Y-You're our leader! We have to protect you!" shouted another ninja, and suddenly they were everywhere, surrounding her, disobeying orders.

"Those who stand at the top have the same duty as those who serve from below! You're no match for this opponent!"

Corrosion had reached the man's thigh, and where he held onto it his fingers were being eaten away. Soi Fon was holding him up in the air now; he could no longer support himself. His mask meant she wasn't even sure who he was.

"You are all dismissed! I order you all to retreat!" Most of them didn't move.

"Captain, we can't afford for you to die. We are replaceable, you are not."

"I am keeping _you_alive right now." She seethed, seeming angry at someone who wasn't even present. "A NOBLE WHO FLEES THEIR DUTY DOES NOT DESERVE TO STAND ABOVE OTHERS!" She roared, kicking the ones she could reach far into the distance, breaking bones just to intimidate them into leaving, all without releasing the dying man from her left arm. She couldn't afford to discard Suzumebachi's bankai form, and it was that which hampered her the most.

Barragan watched the court drama gleefully, holding back from killing all the fools and jesters simply because self-sacrifice and morals were fairly new and amusing to him.

Her saviour choked and sobbed, time eroding him like a cancer.

"No harm, no self, no substance. Light of entropy. Watcher's Seat Hollow Chant Kido Number Six, Cage of Negation!"

A column of yellow light descended, a blessing shining down from heaven, and Soi Fon smiled bitterly at her near-death subordinate.

"Your loyalty just saved Soul Society. You stole time from the ruler of Hueco Mundo."

The martyr nodded hopelessly, and she prayed he understood.

"Please be proud of yourself," she urged him gently, as several of his team mates cast healing kido upon him that they knew wouldn't work.

The man nodded once more, weakly, and suddenly there was just a limp skeleton in her grasp, the bones disintegrating.

"I didn't know we had a kido like that," said Toushiro blearily, the three ice-stars behind his wings reduced to one and a fragment. Soi Fon noted how the decimation of the water in the sky had backfired on his energy levels, almost an afterthought, as she carefully scattered the ash in her hand that moments ago had been a living person. She glared at the other agents that they should leave immediately, pointing the huge cannon shell on her right arm at them in non-too-humorous threat. Funnily enough, they obeyed.

"I'm sure none of us will quickly forget the humiliation of being blocked by the Gillians' Caja Negacion when Aizen defected. As a negative space, we can hope time won't affect kido of that ilk." Kuchiki-taicho was breathing harshly, and looking severely sick. "But it can only stall him…"

The Soutaicho interrupted their reprieve, stepping up to examine the manmade Caja Negacion. Barragan was trapped within it, motionless. "I will finish this fight," he meted out unhappily, feeling like a terrible old warlord who callously sent child soldiers out to die. "You have all done well, but kings should fight kings, and I shouldn't have wagered your lives on my own empty boasts."

"Empty boasts? We are the elite captains of the thirteen squads, a responsibility my entire family has devoted itself to. There is nothing empty about our skills or daring," retorted Byakuya, proud to the last breath.

The founder of their metropolis seemed to smile.

And yet a strange noise escaped him, a wheeze of pain, his eyes rolling back into his head. A Garganta had crept open behind him the instant his attention wandered, and now Hallibel's shark tooth sword was in his back, hacking neatly through his spinal cord. Her skin was charred in places where she had waited till the very last moment to escape, just to convince him. Although he could steady himself with reiatsu, and Ryuujin Jakka would regenerate the wound in time, his limbs were numb, helpless.

"This is a revolution," she reminded him in a cruel voice. "This is when peasants can kill kings."

She said a strange word, _hirvienda_, and boiling water surged through his broken veins, soaked into his body, searing him to the core. Fire began to flicker into life at the edges of his injuries, as Ryuujin Jakka fought to revive him. The pain came like an old unwilling acquaintance whose visitations he could never quite escape.

Yamamoto struggled to speak, the words bubbling in his blood-drenched throat. But they felt so necessary, all of a sudden. "You… were alone at your death. I apologise."

"I was not alone, I died surrounded by people, in sacrifice to some deity that has since been forgotten; I was murdered in no one's name for the sake of a stranger's peace of mind. And every person I have met since has attempted to repeat the act, except those three Fraccion and Aizen-sama!"

"There was no shinigami there to guide you. No one ever told you that our blades are sent to purify the soul, and no one ever told you your mask is only a lie, armour to hide your true self."

The arrancar dismissed these revelations out of hand. "Are you hoping I will lie down and let you end me? You will have to try harder than that to stop me from changing the status quo in my home."

"The entirety of Seireitei exists to change the Hollows' fate. This is why I made contracts with higher powers that we might have the strength to protect more people. Do you not see your Espada Zero in that window, as human as the day she was born? Do you not sense that Fourth Espada in the streets below, clutching his heart for the first time?"

She could indeed sense their changes, had long ago with her sharpest perception. But she hadn't known what they meant, hadn't recognised the heart she'd almost never had. Eyes widening, she stuttered, succumbing to hope. "But Barragan will turn your world to sand." She fought redemption, not even knowing why; she couldn't trust these self-styled gods who had left her in the wilderness to suffer. "Starrk, and the Cero Espada are even stronger. No one can fight Aizen-sama."

"Starrk has already fallen," said the Commander-General carefully. "And Aizen is an upstart, just a captain without even the dual powers of a Vaizard or arrancar."

"If he needed the Hougyoku's tricks for his own power, he would never have been able to master it," said the Hollow woman, shaking her saffron hair dismissively. She wanted to believe him, though, it was all she had ever desired, that she might be saveable.

Genryuusai felt the flames of rebirth raging through his wrecked body, the ever faithful companion. "This phoenix Ryuujin Jakka became the first zanpakuto entirely _because_ he could teach us to be reborn…"

_Don't you want to imagine that future without sacrifice and the death of your comrades?_ whispered Aizen in her memories.

She pulled the fang out of his back carefully, uncertainly. The Caja Negacion was thinning already, but the Soutaicho was no longer fit to face his counterpart. The noble was exhausted and his sword just a tattered hilt. The female captain was holding her wrinkled and arthritic hand to her face in disbelief, having just realised that her dead comrade's aging had infected her by contact.

As for the young one with powers similar to her own, he only lacked a weapon, for all the water had been burned from the atmosphere.

Tia Hallibel turned to stare into the distance, seeking out her Fraccion where they hid in the backstreets of Seireitei, and checking on their survival.

The cage was starting to crack. The king was starting to speak again.

"Luisenbarn!" called Hallibel, pointing her large sword at him in treason. "You were always the seed of hell in that desolate place, you were the one that made it empty and cold and dark."

And Barragan said, laughing at her: "I had nothing better to do."

Tilting her head up proudly, she pointed her zanpakuto at the charred sky. "I've been reticent about my true capabilities, your Majesty. That _Cascada_ was the best I could do."

"Most people are, and they _all_ think their trump cards are _so_ special and unexpected…" exhaled the king, terribly full of ennui.

"When the sea fell from the sky," she said in bitter remembrance of a life that might once have been hers; "It was called a _Monsoon_."

A boiling geyser erupted from her sword, several times larger than the _Cascada_ waterfall of before: this was the Niagara Falls plummeting upwards.

And Toushiro caught the flood with a sudden rush of elation and a heady grin, being stripped of his powers had made him certain enough that he sorely wanted to use them, and he was not going to let the scourge of Hueco Mundo escape judgement.

"Tenso Jurin!" he commanded, and the tidal wave became a dense hailstorm at his beck and call. The clouds spread out for miles, so pregnant with rain that their waters broke prematurely and a deluge poured downwards. Ice and water mingled, became sleet, pounded down so that the stragglers and survivors in the broken city below fled for cover.

And the wind howled victoriously as Hitsugaya shouted "_Hoten Hyakko!_" And the raging weather settled into gentle, glowing, vicious snow.

The first flake settled on Barragan's crown the moment he broke free of the caja negation, so softly he didn't feel it, and a delicate snowdrop bloomed there, as beautiful as if Jack Frost had drawn it. The next flake spread like a rose on his bone hand, the next was a lily mourning his impending demise.

Hyourinmaru had always been a little jealous of the flowers that bloomed only in the warmth and never in winter.

In minutes a spire of frost blossoms stretched from the earth all the way up to the heavens, a sky scraper of exquisite beauty.

**o)0(o**

"Kuchiki," Soi Fon bit the words out, gritting her teeth against a gradual and unbearable pain. She had lost her flesh up to the wrist as she waited poised to pick up the slack if Toushiro's attack didn't work, and now that she was a safe distance from both Barragan and the deadly snow she could deal with the dire emergency of her rotting limb. "Byakuya! Get over here."

He approached her somewhat slower than usual, betraying his own weariness. Then he saw the bare radius bone of her forearm she was holding out, and flash-stepped straight to her side.

"You were holding the dying man?" It was an accusation disguised as a question.

"I do not regret it," she replied stiffly, wincing hard as her muscles nibbled themselves away. "He made a pivotal distraction. If the Espada had targeted you at that moment, I doubt we would have lived."

"Hush," said Byakuya absent-mindedly, aware of what was necessary to save her life but with no sword attached to his zanpakuto's hilt. He was trying to recall any scalpel medical kido he could adapt, but none really suited.

"Out of a million blades, surely you must have _one_ left," said Soi Fon tartly, feeling she would dismiss her bankai and do the grisly job herself in the next ten seconds.

Byakuya raised his graceful eyebrows in slight surprise. "I apologise. Of course I do."

He stepped back a little, and held out his bladeless hilt. "Last Sight, Emperor's Sword Hakuteiken."

The world darkened to deep midnight blue around them, she glanced up in alarm, trapped in the Kuchiki clan leader's private battlefield. White shimmering wings stretched out, and a wide glittering halo encircled his back. The final blade burned like magnesium, fleeting dazzling heat. She had never heard of this facet to his bankai, entranced by its third release. He sliced down with the most distractingly beautiful sword Soi Fon had ever seen, and sheared off her arm at the shoulder.

She cried out in pain, the nerves there weren't dead like the ones touched by Respira, and it hurt like hell, despite his last sword being so wafer thin and razor sharp she only felt its passing in retrospect. Blood was pumping out and she couldn't clamp it down, as her right arm was still wrapped in Suzumebachi's bankai and she had been trained not to dispel it until the enemy was declared dead.

Then something deliciously cold and numbing froze the stump entirely. Her eyes unclenched, blinked open. Toushiro was holding an ice-flower against her open wound. She took the breath of cool air that had been choked from her by pain.

"And this is the whole sky you thought you couldn't control?"

He looked at her with green eyes, once more the stable, genius captain, still lit from within by his reiatsu that still salted the area with soft snow and murderous flowers.

"Self-control is a small concern compared to protecting somebody's life," was all he said, the same concern that made him become a shinigami after his grandmother grew sickly, the same concern that had made him an excellent captain and guardian. Soi Fon nodded, pleased with his answer, prepared to match it.

"Kuchiki-taicho, hold onto my sash please. I can't brace myself in this state." Soi Fon stood up with the last dregs of her adrenaline, and she'd make anyone believe she could still fight on for another week rather than appear vulnerable.

Byakuya stooped to pick up the tiny woman's trailing steel-cloth sash, and hid his surprise at its tremendous weight.

"It's an anchor," she snapped when Toushiro too tested its weight and nearly dropped it. "Now…" She sighted along Suzumebachi's sniping scope and smiled with malicious glee. "...Perhaps this ridiculous bankai will finally be useful for something. Because if Suzumebachi's shikai is a two-hit kill, her bankai is naturally a one-hit kill."

Byakuya and Toushiro deigned to share a worried glance, gripped the long sash together and stepped back from the tiny lady with the massive cannon strapped to her arm.

She looked down at her amputated arm for a moment where it was falling apart on the floor, and thought of the brave man who had helped her without her permission. She had recognised him in the end, one of her fellow trainees from a century ago, ones she'd thought she had outlived by the time she became a captain. And this bankai, that usually she could only fire once in three days, and was about to use for the second time in less than half an hour…it seemed worth any cost for her old team mate.

With two captains hanging off her steel mesh apron strings, Soi Fon ground her jaws in suicidal obstinacy and hauled her torpedo shell bankai into firing position. There was no minute to spare on recovery, because the King of Hueco Mundo was unfathomable and even Hyourinmaru's frostbite blessing to cold-cauterise her wound was agonising.

Her lungs were getting weak and throat rasping, remaining limbs shaking. She peered along the target sight at spots crawling across her vision. 'Jyakuho, ' croaked the little queen bee, and the hornet stung the spire of flowers.

A tremendous ray of vengeance blazed forth from her golden zanpakuto, as gold as Luisenbarn's snow-rimed crown, striking the tower of ice blossoms solidly and decimating the glacier into a hundred million crushed diamonds, a shatterglass hailstorm.

And Barragan's defiant old bones, that had defied every year of time and eluded the archaeologists of the future, split with hairline fractures and greenstick breaks, bent and twisted and spilt out their dried and rotted marrow for the world to see. His crown and golden adornments melted down his face and arms and ribs in messy molten streaks. His rich violet robes and black ermine edging frayed and fell to stitches, moulted. And with his ineffable command over time itself slowed, just for a moment, that was all that was left of him.

He aged like Dorian Grey facing his portrait, decomposing entirely.

But still not dead.

Just a dark, violent mist hung in the air, a bad omen, the dregs of a malign spirit. The second jaws cracked as the shadow clashed its molars, gnashed the second set of teeth that always hid behind a hollow's mask. Shining dark red spots of rage glinted where his eye sockets had been.

The not-eyes sought out their counterpart, ignoring the captains who had painstakingly beaten him in favour of the one who had raised them so effectively.

"YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A CHILD! I WAS KING BEFORE YOU EVEN BUILT THIS CITY! WITH YOUR HORDES OF LITTLE PRETENDERS TO MY THRONE, CALLING THEMSELVES SHINIGAMIS WHEN THE ONLY TRUE GOD OF DEATH IN THIS EXISTENCE IS ME! I WILL SUBJUGATE YOUR WORLD AND SHOW YOU WHO HAS ALWAYS RULED IN THE SHADOWS BEFORE YOUR SO-CALLED SPIRIT KING WAS EVER BORN!"

"Foolish." Yamamoto's voice, eyes, posture: his very essence was damning. "I have never been a child."

"And I doubt I was once anything so lowly as a man," hissed the lich king savagely, facing his end and refusing to acknowledge it.

The doors appeared silently, stealthily slipping open behind the Hollow who had evidently been a sinful despot even back in his long forgotten human life. The skeletons, bandaged and cackling, adorning the monolithic gateway, smiled down upon the mad ruler who had eluded them for time out of mind.

Tia stared at the portal to purgatory, suffused by fear she had not known before. She had always been unafraid to put her afterlife on the line; that somehow causing her to survive to the point of a vasto lorde even when she didn't consume her fellow lost souls. But this was petrifying, because now she was forced to admit she was hollow, evil, aberrant, and this domain of agony was the only logical ending for her.

The butterflies were already pouring out of the red rift, heading for her, the utterly defenseless, weak yet ominous ushers of hell.

The Soutaicho placed a hand on her shoulder and she shuddered at the unfamiliar contact.

"It is too late for me. Do it," she said, spreading her arms wide. "And my Fraccions, spare them from this pointless existing. But do not hurt Aizen, for his aim is to change the laws of nature that turn us into these wretched forms."

"That is not your fate," he said in a deep bass whisper, astounded by all that he had seen in this brief, vicious war. "The messengers will lead you someplace better."

"Where?" quaked Hallibel, as if she had anything left to lose.

"Only those within the path of konsou know where it leads, and we forget it as soon as we return," shrugged the mighty old man, already recovered from his spinal rupture. "It's said only the hell butterflies remember the way..."

The butterflies reached them, danced about them in mesmerising patterns, and as an old man laid the mark of Soul Burial upon her forehead Tia Hallibel was swallowed by the sky.

The gates were opening slowly, and Barragan struggled even against the gatekeeper of hell, crumbling the mighty weapon that attempted to stab his hazy body, flaying the monstrous hand that scraped through the doors that were suddenly small in comparison, skinning the fingers that clutched for his insubstantial form.

Hallibel reappeared nearby in a shaft of gentle blue light, and no aura of reiatsu followed her. Her face was soaked in disbelief, her soul equalised and human, her warped powers erased.

Yamamoto frowned at her, addressing his exhausted captains. "How indomitable these vasto lordes are. Not a single one of the four has reincarnated, or submitted to death under any duress. We have defeated them, barely, but killed not a single one."

Tia regarded him intently, no less daring for all her demotion, and spoke the truth of Hueco Mundo.

"It is because our souls had desires they could not release," she uttered, low, soft, haunting. "Starrk for companionship in his loneliness, Ulquiorra for substance in his emptiness, and Hallibel for protection in her sacrifice."

"And him?" growled the grizzled old shinigami, tilting his head in his rival's direction, not worthy of a gesture.

"King Barragan Luisenbarn the Only, yearned for dominance in his damnation." The words tasted of hatred in her mouth. "But in truth, all he held was worthless; hence the world became ash in his worthless hands."

Barragan endured, his bones completely shattered, his crown turned to gold dust, his opulent robes and furs mere scraps. All that remained of him was the black beneath the mask.

Genryuusai-Shigekuni felt something like excitement, a thrill through his long-stoic soul, a realisation that his city had finally struck out at their enemy's foundations after two millennia of futile struggling against the Hollows. He raised his withered head, slammed down his victory cry. "Your era is over!"

The murky shape laughed, howled insanely. "And you think Hueco Mundo will fall? Hahaha hahaha hahaa! I am only a king! Only the ruler of all that crawls, shits and breathes in the desert, only the tyrant of all my dominion! I am not the earth and sky themselves… Time is inescapable, but so is the world. Hueco Mundo will never die."

The sword-bearer, the guardian of the gate of hell, the blade that simply speared its prey as it chose them – even that unutterable being was rusted, corroded by Barragan's presence. But not slowed, not stopped, because such tortures were negligible in Hell, possibly even soothing compared to what awaited in its depths.

The gateway slammed shut with a crack like a falling tombstone.

The King was dead.

**o)0(o**

But now the gatekeeper is stooping, peering out through the macabre gate, stretching an impossibly long hand out in the palm of which is a hypnotic bloodshot eye, roving ceaselessly over the landscape in search of morsels of brutality to devour…

And this arm reaches all the way to the peak of Soul Society, and this hand drips ichor on the First Division Headquarters where the Secunda Espada has torn its skin and this eye stares through the splintering reinforced glass at Kurosaki Karin.

Karin, just an innocent child, just a pure killer, watches the hand of judgement approach without falling to her knees at the power radiating from hell, for she does not perceive it.

She just waits and asks it, with inevitable defencelessness and grief;

"So it _was_ me who killed Ichi-nii?"

And the hand flinches back, struck by its own guilt.

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

Hallibel: Now give me the powers you promised, so that I may be the one to sublimate my loyal Fraccions.  
Yama-jii: *Cough* Well, you'll have to enrol in the school, and uh…regain any trace of the powers you've just completely discarded, and umm…  
Hallibel: Grrr.  
Yama-jii: Let me just leave you in the capable hands of Hitsugaya-taicho, here, and he'll, *ahem*, he'll sort you out. With what we promised. *Cough*.

**o)0(o**

Toushiro's Tenzo Jurin hits the South Coast of England: in the space of five minutes, we had brilliant sunshine, a massive gale, a HAILSTORM IN AUGUST, followed by torrential rain, and ending with a rolling rumble of thunder and lightning. And then it was bone dry again.

Thanks, chibi-taicho. Thanks.

**o)0(o**

_I have a theory of Barragan's origins:__**Soul King 'Just Bones' Brook**__, from One Piece!_

Soi Fon: Barry?  
Barragan: Not anymore. I am darkness. I am death. Vengeance and fury! Fire and blood! Diamonds and bones! Sapphire and... Steel. Confess, Soi Fon. Confessssss!  
Soi Fon: Ohh I get it. This is just you sulking, isn't it? It's the Karakura Vacation all over again…  
Barragan: A sulk? You killed me!

(Being Human, season 1)

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan says:_

I try to plan the fights as short and sharp but it's like every freaking arrancar actually has this immensely tortured and purple speech just waiting to burst out of them!

_Pippin's Socks says:_

XDDD

They all want to join the Royal Shakespeare Company

_Alliriyan says:_

I SEE

_Pippin's Socks says:_

WHAT LIGHT, BEYOND YONDER BANKAI BREAK, IT IS THE EAST, AND AIZEN IS THE SUN

_Alliriyan says:_

What's in a name? That which we call a zanpakuto, By any other name would still kick as much ass.  
[Zangetsu: If you can't even get my name right, I'm not kicking jack shit for you.]

_Alliriyan says:_

There are more things in heaven and earth, Kubo, than are dreamt of in your plotfailery.

_Pippin's Socks says:_

OUT DAMNED PLOT HOLE; OUT I SAY.

_Alliriyan says:_

HAHA

Matsumoto Rangiku: Alas poor Gin! I knew him well, Toushiro, a fellow of infinite sneer, of most excellent poncing.  
He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, *wiggles eyebrows*, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.

_Pippin's Socks says:_

XDDD

oh god this is too much fun

make it stop

_Alliriyan says:_

Is this a godmode which I see before me...? ?

O, beware, my lord, of Ulquiorra;

It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock  
The meat it feeds on.

_Pippin's Socks says:_

TO BANKAI, OR NOT TO BANKAI, THAT IS THE QUESTION, WHETHER 'TIS NOBLER IN BATTLE TO SUFFFER THE SLINGS OF FILLER EPISODES

_Alliriyan says:_

My author's filler arcs are nothing like the plot,

One Piece is far more awesome in Bleach's stead;

If Naruto be ninjas, why then his Soi Fon be dumb;

if Bleach be going on too long, grey hairs grow on Ichigo's head.

I have seen plot twists shocking, unique and fun,

but no such twists see I in Rukia's cheeks;

And in some manga is there more delight

than in the drivel that from my author reeks.

I love to read his manga, yet well I know

that most others hath a far more pleasing flow;

I grant I never saw a death god go,

my characters when they walk tread on air.

And yet, by Soul Society, I think my fanfic as rare

As any belied with false compare.

_Pippin's Socks says:_

omg

beautiful

-slow clap-

-standing ovation-

**o)0(o**

_Alliriyan~*_


	44. Fray

**Hell Butterfly**

**Fray**

**~44~**

**o)0(o**

"Does he really like them?" asked Uryuu, elbowing his way into the crowd gathered around Ichigo's kitchen table.

Chad carefully balanced a Hollow bait tablet on his pet gecko's mask.

"Stay…" he rumbled, and then Inoue leaned forward and put another one on top, in a strange game of Jenga.

"Go!" commanded Ichigo quickly, impatient for the trick. The zombie gecko flicked its head up and snapped the pills out of mid-air, crunching them down with a purr.

"Well done Morff!" cooed Orihime, building a little tower out of the condensed spiritual matter capsules, that seemed the undead gecko equivalent of sweets. Morff tilted his mask at them and creeled hungrily, its eyes tiny red afterglows.

"Food's ready!" called Yuzu, bringing a heavy bowl full of fried snacks over, and slamming it on the table. Her Nii-chan's friends all yelped.

"Mind the gecko!"

"Oh, I'm sorry! I can't really see him," she panicked, as the bowl picked itself up and started to crawl away.

"Don't worry, he's pretty indestructible," smirked Ichigo, waving a hand carelessly. The fingers had a few small, deep bite marks, because the pet had a temper when its new owners started experimenting. "Though I haven't tried sharpening Zangetsu on it yet."

"Don't say that in front of him," scolded Inoue, lifting the bowl of food off the Hollow's back and helping herself to the delectable contents. "These are so good, Yuzu-chan, can you teach me how-?"

"Um. Um," said the little chef nervously. "Last time you were in the kitchen you set yourself on fire."

"I won't stand so close to the hobs again," whimpered Orihime, fully chastened.

"Don't you think feeding it Hollow bait will attract other Hollows?" asked Ishida, picking the creature up by the tail and examining it. "Like the last time?"

The front door slammed open and the man of the house, Isshin, stood silhouetted there dramatically. "Son! A small adorable girl calling you Itsygo has just phoned to inform me that the arrancars are invading!"

"Now look what you did, Morff!" admonished Uryuu, shaking the tiny Hollow. "Wait, who's invading?"

"All of the Espada! Itsygo, are you ready to kick Hollow butt and make Daddy-chan proud?"

Yuzu tugged on her bewildered brother's t-shirt, and he glanced down at her. "Nii-chan, can I call you Itsygo too?"

"_Yer Maj'ness, can I call you Itsygo too?"_ teased Shirosaki Hichigo in the back of his head.

"Don't we have bigger things to worry about?" pointed out the vaizard, lifting up his Shinigami Substitute badge that was now shrieking shrilly, and pressing it to his heart. He popped out of his human body and lifted the ever-ready Zangetsu from his back.

"Let's go, guys," he said confidently; then faltered. Ishida and Sado looked slightly offended that he'd forgotten their forced retirement so soon. His girlfriend was waving her arm in an 'ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me!' manner. "I mean, uh, let's go Orihime. Actually, maybe you should stay here and protect this lot. Uh…Dad, do you wanna…?"

"Want to what?" asked Isshin excitedly, eyes glittering.

"…Join…in?"

"I THOUGHT YOU'D NEVER ASK, MY BELOVED FIRSTBORN! LET THIS BE OUR FIRST FATHER-SON BONDING FIELD TRIP!"

Ichigo grimaced in regret. "Don't most families just go fishing or something?"

But his father was already ignoring him, and ruffling his beloved daughter's hair. "I will bring you back lots of souvenirs, Yuzu. You can make Daddy and Itsygo a victory feast whilst they are out slaughtering the big mean nasty meanies."

Yuzu answered him in perfect seriousness and anxiety. "Otou-san, will the one who took Karin-chan be there? You have to be careful!"

"The dear little girl on the phone said he'd already been sent to Hell by my three former colleagues, sweetie, by Kuchiki Byakuya and Soi Fon and that lovely lad Toushiro!" Isshin was quite choking with pride for his successor to the Tenth Squad captaincy. Yuzu's innocent eyes opened wide and turned calculating.

"_Really?_ Oh, maybe I can let Karin-chan date him after all," muttered the girl, rubbing her chin in deep thought.

"WHAT? !" roared Ichigo, halfway out the door with his eyes turning dark and murderous.

"We're all certain it'll happen eventually, Nii-chan!"

"Well then leave it till eventually! She's twelve!"

"Spoilsport," griped Yuzu, pulling faces at his back.

Ichigo grabbed his father by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out into the street, then pointed with his sword in the direction a sickly aura was now emanating from. "They're in the town centre. Let's go before they kill everyone."

And then, completely out of the blue, Zangetsu discharged a blazing Getsuga Tenshou into the house across the street. It ripped the brick walls in twain, pulverised everything from the roof tiles to the foundations, and snuffed out in the back garden. Ichigo opened his hand by reflex, dropping the zanpakuto with a loud clang that seemed quiet in comparison to the collapsing house.

"…I didn't do that."

"You haven't been in a fight since you synchronised with your Inner Hollow, have you?" coughed Isshin, thrown by this utter lack of self-control. He had never, in hundreds of years, seen reiatsu control that bad. Even Masaki had been able to hold back her shikai.

"That was Mitsubishi's house," whimpered Ichigo, completely grey-faced. "I've murdered them all."

'_Whoops,'_ tutted his Hollow carelessly.

"Ahh, no worries, the Mitsubishis were all on holiday in Majorca," the neighbourhood doctor confided loudly to a terrified passer-by.

"Th-these damn trucks crashing into everyone's houses!" squeaked Ichigo, spinning round and wobbling back into the house, leaving his treacherous zanpakuto on the gum-speckled pavement. "I swear it was the same driver as hit us last year! He needs to be locked up!"

"Ichigo, they can't hear you," laughed his father weakly, shaking his head as his son retreated back to his human body. "So I'll just sort this Espada fellow out on my own, shall I? Alright then…"

**o)0(o**

They had just exited the third-floor sweetshop, giggling behind their ice creams, when her friend pushed her over the handrail, screaming her name in fear all of a sudden.

The open courtyard rushed up to crack her head open, and there was no time to wonder why.

In the streets outside the shopping mall people were diving into the fast-moving traffic, cars were screeching in emergency stops, everyone was crying out in mayhem.

In the kitchen stores and dining outlets, shoppers were lifting knives to their companions' necks; the ones perusing window displays were smashing the glass with their bare fists and dancing and rolling amongst the shards. Assistants were opening their cash registers and swallowing the coins and notes in thick fistfuls, choking.

Children and parents were forgetting each other's faces, chasing each other away. Prams were flung down escalators, heavy shopping bags thrown from higher floors like missiles; strangers were shoving each other into the water fountain to drown. And not one of them could see the strange marks flickering on their bodies, like eyes or stars, driving them mad in a few brief seconds then vanishing again to seek the next target.

Only Zommari Leroux saw it all.

**o)0(o**

Ikkaku yawned, freshly dragged from a deep sleep that miraculously blocked out war klaxons and fierce mid-air battles between his superiors, straight through a senkai gate and into central Karakura.

"Taicho," he mumbled, rubbing sleep dust from his slanting red-tattooed eyes. "First, there's five of the same Espada down there; second, neither of us have the kinda zanpakuto that suit fighting in close quarters; and third, I need to do the Luck Luck Dance before we do _anything_ else."

"You assess the situation very accurately for one still half-dreaming," growled the ten-foot-tall wolf looming beside him. "But you underestimate my skill."

A giant's sword materialised above them as Komamura called out his shikai. With blinding speed it impaled the arrancar, pulling short just before it dented the polished flagstones, and touching no other person in the open-roofed building.

The Espada rolled its dilated yellow eyes upwards, and spoke in a low, exotic accent. "Are the eyes of a wolf sharper than a man's? Faster than my Gemelos?"

The animal snorted in dismissal. "Humans should not praise themselves so much. Even a pigeon has better vision."

"Luck-luck," huffed Ikkaku seriously, hopping about behind him. "Tsuki-tsuki!" He pumped his sword and scabbard up and down, clapping on his thighs and yelling occasionally. "Luck-luck dance!"

"And better dancing," scowled the werewolf, cuffing the Eleventh Division Third Seat around the head with his left gauntlet. "Desist."

"What? ! That's a genuine Maori kata! I learnt it from a witchdoctor who got lost in Rukongai thirty years ago…"

"It is unnecessary," said Komamura Sajin with finality. "We will take this heathen to a more fitting battlefield."

"You'll be sorry you didn't finish the Luck Luck dance when we lose," muttered Madarame vehemently, chasing the captain as he shunpoed into the distance.

**o)0(o**

"Which of those damn arrancars have we fished up then? You can sit back, I'll hack him up. Everyone else important in my squad's killed an Espada. I have a rep to maintain."

"All you have caught is an illusion that appears to bleed," said the unnamed Espada calmly, gesturing at the sword through its stomach with an unperturbed hand. "A shadow-magic. The real still generates havoc in the playgrounds of the living."

Ikkaku flung his Houzukimaru over his shoulder and started marching back to the town centre with a loud and very obvious snort of ridicule in Komamura's direction. "'Desist', he said. 'It is unnecessary', he said. '_More fitting battlefield'_, he said! What a bloody waste of time."

Tenken's giant gauntlet plucked Ikkaku from his path and spun him round.

"They are not what you think, Madarame. It is only an optical illusion with extensive limitations, he has to be close to us to maintain his clones. A…Sonido party trick effective only against the likes of the Eleventh Division."

The apparent prisoner faded from its prone location spitted on the wolf's titanic sword.

"Well, he's _clearly_ not here, so let's go _back_," said the Third Seat of the aforementioned Division, very slowly, as if to a moron, turning around yet again.

The wolf growled. The brawler growled back, eager to pick a fight with anyone.

"What are you so serious for, Komamura? This guy is - what's left - Nine was killed by that Rukia chick who wasn't even ranked, One Two Three Four and Six all got dispatched just now in Seireitei, Zero has been playing hopscotch with Yachiru-fukutaicho the past few weeks, Five is about as deadly as a lollipop and there's…how many…what numbers did I say – ah forget it, he's gonna be shit anyway."

The gunshot-echo sound of Sonido ricocheted around the pair, and five unwounded clones surrounded them in the blink of an eye. "I am the Septima Espada," they intoned, mouths all moving slightly out of sync with the words, white teeth flashing against black skin. "An arbitrary ranking that speaks only of reiatsu capacity, and says nothing of risk or talent."

"…'Leventh Squad, Third Seat, Madarame Ikkaku, pleased ter kick yer ass," the bald man replied lazily, rubbing one foot against the itching back of his other knee. "Shouldn't the Seventh dude have seven clones? 'Cause my Spanish is rubbish and it'd make this fight more interesting."

The row of identical men all pulled slightly different expressions. "As your pet dog stated, my Gemelos Sonido is…'limited'."

"Pet wolf." Sajin seemed slightly affronted by the misclassification.

"To be honest, taicho, I thought you were a fox for ages."

His furred ears flicked in irritation and he bared his fangs, almost saying _Pah! They're practically cats!_

"My name is Zommari Leroux," echoed the five men, each bearing a necklace of teeth and a spiny bone mohican as their mask remnants. Tiny skulls bit through their earlobes, triangular tattoos drew attention to their brooding foreheads, their heavy jaw lines. "You may carve that on your graves as your cause of death."

Ikkaku rolled his eyes farcically. "We can't write jack shit on our gravestones if we're dead, you dumbass." And with that cutting rejoinder, he slashed his glaive through the entire quintet.

The first four spurted blood but soon entirely faded from sight, and the last after-image blocked the spear with a lightly placed hand. Ikkaku snapped the partitions of his zanpakuto apart and forced his way into close combat without stopping, driving the butt of the yari spear into the arrancar's stomach and flicking the rest of the three-section weapon round to slash at the enemy's impassive face.

And that, too, faded into nothing.

"Although we are still near humans, I suggest we use bankai," ordered the animalistic captain, sniffing in search of Leroux's new location. "In a war over whole dimensions, overkill is better than no kill at all."

"We?" parroted Madarame innocently.

"Do not continue this pretence of weakness. No one is accusing you of being worthy officer material."

"Oh, well that's alright then," laughed Ikkaku, hooking his arms over the pole across his shoulders. "Because I always intend to stay in Eleventh Squad."

"Yes," continued the overgrown wolf damningly; "you probably noticed that we promoted Fourth Squad healers, mental asylum patients, completely feral strangers, and Abarai Renji before even considering you."

"_And_ Iba!" agreed the Third seat in surprise. "Damn, the other divisions are weak."

"Do not insult my lieutenant," warned Komamura, fur bristling. "Tetsuzaemon is an excellent second-in-command."

"He still owes me sake." Ikkaku began to twirl Houzukimaru in large circles over his head, building up reiatsu for his bankai phase change like a dynamo building electricity. He wondered why his zanpakuto was so lethargic towards battle, the opposite of its wielder. It wasn't like the battle spirit had anything better to do, right? "Bankai, Ryuumon Houzukimaru!"

"Bankai," barked Sajin, needing no such run-up; "Kokujou Tengen Myou-ou!"

The behemoth that thumped into reality, well over a hundred feet tall and shrouded in heavy samurai armour, made Madarame feel that his own triple-blade bankai was slightly insignificant.

"It'd be too awkward trying not to flatten Soul Society," he consoled himself in a mutter, still spinning the steel fan blade round and round in a bid to wake up the crimson dragon slumbering on its surface. "You'd be too scared to pick your nose or scratch your bum in public with that thing."

The horizontally unchallenged wolf and giant peered down at their rude comrade in tandem. Whatever move he made, the giant mimicked it. "Your bankai is still young," said the captain charitably. "It will grow much stronger than this, and perhaps gain some special abilities."

Ikkaku huffed loudly, muscles straining with effort as the dragon began to untangle its glowing coils and the thick chains linking his strangely shaped axes blurred in circles like helicopter blades. "I don't need bells and whistles; I just need a bigger stick to hit the other guy with."

**o)0(o**

Kurotsuchi pulled Ashisogi Jizou from the Octava Espada's neck, watching the arrancar's pink head flop down lifelessly.

"My…fraccion…" he croaked, lifting a hand towards them weakly, a hand that remained paralysed by his side but fearfully not numb. Behind the remnants of his spectacles-like mask and purple facial markings, his eyes were darting around in confusion. He'd analysed these ones after they gate-crashed Hueco Mundo, had he not? Why was he so defenceless?

After all the concentration on Kurosakis and Soutaichos, was it in fact the healer and the lab rat that were the most dangerous?

"Your energy drinks on legs? Of course we killed them all before we even started on you. I tried a couple myself – not bad for flavour, but inconvenient size."

"The auto-regenerative effect could make a good improvement on our Fourth Division reiatsu stamina pills," added Unohana, studying a sample in a vial taken from one of the fraccion. Then she leaned down gracefully to pick up the tiny, childishly designed voodoo doll Szayel Apollo had dropped. "And these could be wonderful diagnostic tools…maybe even for keyhole surgery…"

Popping it open, she rooted around inside with a look of dismay, whilst both mad scientists winced in discomfort beside her. "Either this is a poor imitation or your internal organs are a mess, Mayuri."

The president of the research institute peered over her shoulder, rolled his yellow eyes skywards and curled what little was left of his lips back in distaste. "It's fine," he dismissed her.

"Do you have no idea how bodies are put together? What possible use do you have for two appendixes?"

"I keep memory cards containing my most confidential and private research in them, obviously! How clueless can a person be? You think I leave sensitive information lying around in filing cabinets?" Kurotsuchi began hacking off the arrancar's trailing, sticky, carnivorous plant wings for easier transport of the Espada back to a glass vat in his lab. Although Ashisogi's cruel paralysis had done nothing to dull Szayel's senses, and he had lost the motor control necessary to scream out in agony.

"I need those, they're integral to the miniaturisation system," Retsu called out, closely examining Mayuri's effigy's skull. "Now this is simply ridiculous. Where did you put your brain?"

He threw the cuttings at her in a fit of pique, implying it was her job to stick them back on. "Spiritual bodies have none of the limitations of their physical counterparts, as long as the mental fortitude exists to break the lifetime's habits of bleeding, breathing, and other such reliance on crude chemical reactions!"

"I've no doubt it was saying that whilst you were still alive that killed you." She gathered up the shredded wings and called out Minazuki for surgery time. But just as she tucked the little Twelfth taicho into a pocket, its hat fell off. "Oh!"

"What now!" snapped Kurotsuchi, hogtying the weeping and groaning Apollo.

"I never knew your hair was such a lovely shade of blue," smiled Unohana.

Mayuri stared her in utter horror. His ever-visible teeth ground together in distaste or fury.

"Weren't we meant to know? If you fear what others might think of you, Mayuri, hair colour is the _least_ of your worries…"

**o)0(o**

Tenken by nature of his height could see for miles all around, to the river, to the motorways, across all the intertwining streets of the human world to the very boundaries of the town. And Sajin shared this eagle eye view. In counterbalance, what Tenken was too far away to notice at his feet, on the grass-and-pavement speckled ground: Komamura could perceive with his exceptionally sharp senses for sounds, smells, taste, and touch.

In his confined state Zommari could not afford to fight them head-on, and from his hiding place he simply stared with mournful eyes at the vast titan summoned to crush him.

"Is this the one worthy of my _Amor_?" was all the sober-faced monster said. He glided out of his shadowed alleyway on soft feet, as if exposure no longer held any hazards for him.

"Found you," boasted the beast of prey, zeroing in on the arrancar's position and lunging downwards.

Komamura did not know why Tenken's sword went astray, nor had the bankai ever reversed the strings on its puppetmaster before. But he felt his body twist off target, skewed to strike a comrade rather than a demon. "Madarame!" yelled the hound, in warning or fear he did not know.

Houzukimaru met the falling sword with an excited chink of razor edge meeting razor edge. They scraped together, ear-splitting, a painful nails-on-a-blackboard shriek that made Tousen flinch an entire dimension away.

The dragon flared with heat, and bit its sharp jaws deep into the metal pylon falling down, pushing it back up with a wrench of bunched muscles.

"Tenken!" howled Sajin. "What are you doing?!"

Houzukimaru parried Tenken's katana that fell like no other thing could, meeting and chipping and forcing the skyscraper blade backwards. All of a sudden that axe-head floating at Ikkaku's bare back seemed less superfluous, the dragon crest glowed with rebellion, almost growling. It was obvious, now, why the zanpakuto's name was 'demon light'.

"Is it because I called you a fox?" asked Madarame with a half-grin, spitting at the ground and flicking his mushroom-slice swords into his hands. "Because that's my commanding officer's fault: Yachiru calls you Cap'n Foxy all the time…" He was more excited by the prospect of a decent fight than alarmed by the sudden treachery.

Leroux's swollen eye remained fixed on its target as the rest of him turned to the Third Seat, displeased by the man's assumptions. "You are all the things I detest, shinigami. Stealing credit for the discord sown by my own hands. A bloodthirsty nature that runs towards mischief." He drew his fingers across the chest of his mandarin-style white robe, indicating a poisoned heart. "A look of pride as you shed our innocent blood."

"Innocent?" repeated Komamura incredulously, fighting against his jaw's sudden lethargy.

The broken-masked Hollow stepped forwards, spreading his arms like a preacher, a pacifist. "I have only killed murderers, madmen and the delirious; I have only eaten demons and sinners. Shinigami are so quick to judge those who mimic their hypocritical work."

Madarame sorely wanted to stab the Septima, but now Kokujou Tengen Myou-ou's armoured boot the size of a small car park was descending to crush him, and there was only time to react. Sajin looked like he was stamping on a cockroach. Ikkaku wished it wasn't him.

"What have you done to me?" roared Komamura furiously, blazing with reiatsu that did nothing to stop the shuffling dance he unwillingly performed.

The arrancar could have laughed, or mocked his victim, but chose only to speak calmly as one equal to another. He did not wish to display the same self-infatuation as the death gods did.

"I have become your sovereign. Everything holds sovereignty over something else. Subordinates are at the command of their supervisors, commoners are at the command of their king, the clouds are at the command of the wind, and the light of the moon is at the command of the sun." His head tilted strangely far. "Is this natural order not as you presumed? After my jinxed brothers fell to your kind, for you to submit to me?"

And now the armoured Goliath lifted its head, turned with shambling grace towards the densely populated areas it had previously tried to avoid: and Komamura mimicked it helplessly, though his light paw prints did not snap lampposts like tinder and shake the earth like his sword's did.

"Dismiss your bankai!" shouted Madarame, showing an astonishing level of logic.

But the wolf had been tamed somehow, and could not shuck the leash that bound him. Not even the smallest blink was under his control.

"You are all so arrogant," sighed the dark-skinned and solemn Espada. "Reiatsu? Rank? Size? Nature? Plus and minus? Gods and monsters? All these comparisons, vices, holy wars you invent, as if you could be anything other than corrupt. As if perfection is actually attainable by sinners. All values and morals are simple narcissism."

**o)0(o**

"What the hell are you doing? !" yelled Ishida , pointing furiously in the direction of a blank wall, beyond which an invisible colossus was destroying entire tower blocks. "Get out there and fight like you're supposed to!"

"I want to!" roared back Ichigo, slamming his fists right through the table as he jumped up, and immediately froze, his anger nullified by self-fear. "I mean," he amended quietly, trying to wriggle his hands free of the splintered wood; "I don't want to kill anyone by accident. This isn't like fighting in a desert or…"

"You chose the day of invasion to start noticing your collateral damage? Excellent! So we're all going to sit here uselessly, are we?" demanded the Retired Quincy, throwing his hands in the air. "You're the only one left of us who can fight. It has to be you. Obviously we'd love to help, but due to certain interfering people..."

Orihime ducked her head in guilt, but stood by her impulsive actions. She was even quite surprised by her friend's disapproval. "D…Did you really want to watch Sado-kun become another Hollow we have to kill?"

"Then give Ichigo the same kindness," growled Yasutora, for the first time revealing a shade of the unkind nature that had ruled him as a child in Mexico. The vulnerability he felt, at the fact there was a monster creeping around his home that he was now powerless to oppose.

She flinched, checking the man she loved with wary eyes. In case the other one took offence.

"I can't," she said.

"That's a bit two-faced towards your boyfriend, isn't it?" sniped Ishida. With danger right on their doorsteps, none of the formerly inseparable ryoka gang were showing their best sides, across the schism in their ranks between the haves and the have-nots. "I'm sure he'd _love_ to be rid of his Hollow."

Inoue laughed nervously, stroking her turquoise hairpins for comfort. Fingertips brushing invisible scar tissue. "I don't think his Hollow would agree with you."

"Keep talking about me like I'm not here," announced Ichigo sarcastically, raising an eyebrow. "I'm cool with it. Chad – if you want La Muerte back, just ask her. She can undo anything, right?"

Sado remained silent, contemplating this option deeply. It was possible, but…as much as he yearned to have the strength to help his friends back, the feeling of clay choking him was unbearable. Because somewhere deep inside he remembered how it felt to be trapped in that suffocation for time out of mind. The wild skull of La Muerte superimposed over his empty self.

"If you don't mind killing your friends every now and then," Kurosaki added, looking pointedly at Chad's gold medallion. He was quite certain Sado's Abuela had never intended that for his grandson.

"As if you wouldn't?" replied Uryuu archly.

"Hey, the only reason you don't look like that table, four-eyes..." Ichigo flopped back on a sofa, relaxing with his arms folded behind his head. He couldn't afford to get stressed. Things would explode.

"Have you _snapped_, Kurosaki?" demanded the Last Quincy, his forced withdrawal and the lack of vicarious firepower from his teammates combining to make him excessively irate.

Ichigo's mind whirled with memories of, yes, snapping – breaking, drowning, completely losing himself, and having no choice but to let it happen, and just accept he was beyond repair, and having to swallow down his darkest schizophrenia and countless past lives like a bitter pill. He'd only been able to return from that place because he'd stopped fighting and thrown himself away. He'd only been able to throw himself away because of the scant hope Orihime might come pick him up again in another lifetime.

And now here were the consequences. He'd thrown himself away, fused with the Hollow, each of them becoming their nemesis, and now he could barely grasp himself. He'd lost sight of his natural boundaries. He was clinging to gunpowder with flaming fingers.

"Oi… Ishida… Why is it that you're allowed to hit your 'limit' just because you _nearly_ kill your friends, but when _I_ _do kill them_…I'm not allowed to quit?"

Reaching for the forgotten bowl of snacks on the splintered table as a distraction, he shrugged sardonically, avoiding their eyes. "I must be fucking invincible."

That was a horrible revelation, and the room fell into stunned silence. Listening secretly from the stairs, Yuzu covered her mouth and tried not to cry.

"Yeah, I said I wanted to protect a whole mountain of people…" Ichigo continued, eyes golden with anger, striving to remain immobile and harmless; "but I can't."

Uryuu and Yasutora gawked at each other, pretty sure they'd remember if he'd killed them, and suddenly their heads snapped in tandem towards the Hollow's favourite target.

Inoue seemed both distinctly distressed and worryingly calm. Facing Ichigo's actions was painful, but the death itself, so swift and easily fixed, was not alarming at all. With her strange breed of retrograde indestructibility it was hard to maintain sensible fears.

But she could not fix Ichigo's mind, even if she could stitch a body and a life together.

"It's not as bad as you think," she began sheepishly, searching frantically for some way to portray this in a positive light. Chad was a portrait of disbelief.

"It's worse," Ichigo quipped quickly, falling back on Hichigo's flippant humour to get him through this awkward exposure of his ruined soul. Uryuu was struggling to take it all in, mouth flapping.

"A-A-And you two are now dating? ! Is this Corpse Bride?!"

"I _know!_" cheered Ichigo, glad someone else finally understood his dilemma. Despite admitting that they loved each other, and his soul so desperately needing her for its sanity, his logic still felt that he shouldn't be allowed to keep someone he had hurt so deeply. "She's crazy! I pointed this out to her but she wouldn't listen!"

"I listened," mumbled his soul mate, missing the key issue; "I just ignored you afterwards."

"Should I have stayed in Mexico?" muttered Chad to himself, taking a long hard look at where his life had ended up. The Hollow Gecko chirped at him in sympathy.

However they failed to explain the reasoning why, Uryuu was forced to accept the alien concept of a _Kurosaki Ichigo who would not fight._ He adjusted his glasses carefully, genius intellect whirring through the necessary changes if they planned to survive. Out of habit and justified prejudice, he never once considered the option of allowing the Gotei Thirteen to save them. After all, his grandfather had not been protected at the crucial moment. So, he would have to take things into his own hands…

"Damn it, Kurosaki!" fumed Ishida, flinging on his Quincy cape in defeat. "You're so...high maintenance!" And he left, abruptly slamming the door shut behind him.

The three regarded each other.

"Coming from a guy with a spare cape?" asked Ichigo in amazement.

**o)0(o**

The blade fell. Again. Again. Sometimes striking homes, snuffing out lives. Sometimes parried by Ikkaku and Houzukimaru. Sometimes sweeping along a street, knocking cars about like autumn leaves.

There was a strange, roaring silence as the samurai stilled; an absence of castrophony that seemed quiet despite punctured by screams of earthquakes and terror.

Zommari Leroux studied his surroundings with his spare eye and a faint, angry curl to his lip. The bankai should not have stopped. Something was obstructing it. Using Pesquisa, he became aware of the slender, near-invisible chains anchoring the giant's rampage. Though the three of them, linked by puppet strings, strained with equal effort – the marionette moved not an inch. And it was an obvious opportunity.

Madarame struck like a viper, slicing his fan-blades through Sajin's hamstrings and arm muscles in a quick whirling dance. The beast collapsed, his counterpart sagging in its armour. Blood poured fast from the deep cuts, pooling around the fallen wolf.

Whining and growling in pain, the captain managed to squint up at his comrade-in-arms. "I must thank you for stopping me," he croaked; "…though I fear it may kill me…"

Yet Ikkaku's face was filled with madness, warped by demon light. The axes slashed a second time, and Komamura howled.

"If yer name's not Zaraki Kenpachi, I ain't dying under your command!" he yelled wildly, as if Tenken was still crushing him underfoot.

"Stop!" cried the hound, forgetting his pride.

"You shouldn't have picked a fight, 'cause I always finish mine," grinned Ikkaku, as easily as if beheading a Hollow.

"You believe it's your fight?" rolled a damning voice behind them. "Taking the tribute for my victories, blind to the darkness infesting you."

As the Eleventh Squad Third Seat turned to face this new taunt, Sajin saw the strange symbol inked on the back of his neck. It seemed slightly askew, not fully effective. "I'm not the only one too stupid to notice things," snorted Madarame with the last of his sanity, waving his weapon towards the frozen titan.

Zommari smiled humourlessly. "See the truth now," he instructed softly. "There are Hollows sleeping beneath the veneer of all living things. Tremble in fear and eat your own flesh."

Ikkaku lifted his shaking hands to his mouth, opened his palms, Ryuumon Houzukimaru falling. His eyes glazed over. He licked his teeth, said, "Why would I listen to you?" – and bit down regardless.

"No!" barked Komamura. "Stop this! You've lost your mind!"

And just as teeth ground against bone, Ikkaku too was ensnared in an invisible spider's web, forcibly stopped, forcibly saved from himself.

**o)0(o**

Uryuu watched the Espada carefully, and when his attention was fully absorbed by the two shinigami, made a run for the bankai he had disabled with his Ransoutengai ability. He had not used it since his paralysis at Kurotsuchi's hands, and never on such a grand scale. As he'd hoped, there were empty gaps between the plates and greaves of the armour, a hollow Goliath. With a burst of Shirenkyaku he soared upwards and was swallowed by the grinning mask, cunningly hiding in the centre of the battlefield.

The dense mass of foreign reiatsu hemming him in on all sides, the Captain of the Handicrafts Club set about spinning his delicate spider silks into a network of steel wires and thick rope hawsers to puppeteer the giant. In the dark, he could not see the black star on the shoulder of his cape.

"You did not think I had eyes in the back of my head?" asked the Espada calmly, meditating on his certain victory. "I have not _begun_ to fight yet, and all three of you are already lost."

With all his opponents already under his control, he finally drew his false zanpakuto from its white sheath.

"I have communed with and subdued the spirits of the Other Sides since long before I died," described the witchdoctor, placing his sword horizontally in midair and drawing his hands into a prayer position. It did not fall. "All things know how to submit, addicted to my black magic."

He tipped his neck to the right, jerking it further than physically possible, and with every twist another vertebra popped, with every crack of his spine the blade of the zanpakuto also bent with a discharge of violet energy: until his head sat perpendicular to his neck, and his sword had been hammered into a broken circle.

'Suppress,' salivated the Espada, 'Brujeria!'

Grey smoke flooded outwards, a haze obscuring arcane rituals as the arrancar metamorphosed within the smog. The air pressure increased painfully, and then the ashen clouds drained away, breathed back in by the monster, smoke rings in reverse.

His true form had barely altered but the rush of aura had shredded his uniform, revealing a Hollow that barely looked Hollow at all, an adjuchas who had taken an animalistic form as they all did, but understood that humans were just another animal. His unveiled skin was a rich brown studded with swollen scarification marks that one by one blinked open and revealed themselves as eyeballs embedded in his body.

And though his hollow remnants remained small, the mask he shattered had respawned into many more, an abstract array of tribal masks orbiting him, their eyes also living flesh, golden and deadly.

In his Resurrección, he did not need to maintain a direct line of sight.

Ishida felt a sudden cramping in his arm, shouting out as his muscles twisted beyond their limits without his intention, and the bones beneath fractured. Gasping for breath, trying to maintain his hold on both Ikkaku and Tenken, he searched in the shadows for the root of his pain.

"I don't like Quincy arrows," mentioned Leroux, his voice echoing from the brand on Uryuu's shoulder. "They represent the greatest conceit in the universe, giving themselves the right to consign souls to oblivion. Perhaps this will discourage you from drawing your bow."

"I never planned to," hissed the Quincy through gritted teeth. "I gave that up."

Though none of them knew it, in a hospital office far away, Ishida Ryuuken was ignoring his blaring pager as the emergency alerts flooded in; aiming one of his unique, hyper-dense, corkscrew arrows directly at the Espada endangering his only son. A microphone stitched into the collar of his clueless offspring's Quincy uniform was relaying every sound from the battlefield back to his attentive ears. His sight was hugely enhanced by Quincy sniping techniques embedded magically into his faintly glowing spectacles.

"You're such a paranoid father," mocked Urahara from the desk, idly leafing through Ryuuken's private paperwork.

"I'll assume you speak out of jealousy since Shihouin Yoruichi will never agree to bear a child for you," replied the doctor stiffly.

Kisuke choked, almost dropping his cane. "Can you imagine? It'd be like a baby Aizen. Worse. Our powers combined would wreak too much havoc to be allowed. Besides, the brat would be an ultra-perfect super-genius prince or princess of the Shihouin Noble Family. That's just…too unlikeable. They'd rule the world by the age of three." He gave a genteel shudder.

"I see you've given it a lot of thought," jibed Ishida Senior all too accurately.

Urahara loudly changed the subject. "SO! How will your dear son shoot himself in the foot this time? Hiding inside a rogue bankai under an Espada's control, right? Really, he takes strategy to all-new lows."

"I had hoped that I had finally gotten through to him," confessed the silver-haired surgeon with deep regret. He was being a pure hypocrite, but Uryuu's life was the sole exception to his rule of pacifism. The supercharged arrow bucked against his grip, the hardest thing with this archery being to hold it back. "Even if all descendents of my tribe became doctors forever more, we would not be able to repay the lives we have destroyed. Yet he so swiftly forgets his sins-"

There was a crackle of static, and the guilt-ridden man was interrupted by his son's distant voice.

"Who needs arrows, anyway?" panted Uryuu through the speaker on Ryuuken's desk. "Right now, I'm the only Quincy ever to wield a zanpakuto…a bankai!"

"Ohohohooo!" trilled Urahara as Ryuuken's eyes opened wide in surprise. "I take it all back! I can't decide which of them is more entertaining, Ichigo or Uryuu!"

And miles away, Tengen Myou-ou lifted its sword with silent joy, a willing puppet now, and slammed it into Zommari's hiding place.

**o)0(o**

"I can't stand this," said Ichigo suddenly, pacing the length of the house and leaving little dents in the hardwood floor.

"What's the matter?" asked Chad, while Orihime peered at him carefully, using her ultra-high sensitivity to decide whether or not he was dangerous. Well, at least he smelt normal.

"I _really_ want to know what Dad's bankai is…" confessed Ichigo with a look of tortured denial. "Watching isn't like fighting, right? Bye!"

"Waaaiiit!" wailed his friends, too late.

**o)0(o**

The dust cleared, and a strange form nestled into the rubble. A ring of African tribal masks each with fierce carved faces, huddled together like the patterns on a turtle's shell. A slurring chant echoed from the protective cage.

"Now I see _all_, as the shamans do. Now _all_ vain overlords fall subservient to me. Even Aizen-sama never dared to stand before me, always using his smoke and mirrors in my presence. Had I ever cared to look upon Barragan's rotted face, be aware that _I_ would have been the King of Hueco Mundo."

Tenken's sword smashed against the defensive circle a few more times, denting it a little; then the archer demonstrated his inner ineptitude at swordplay by bracing Tengen Myou-ou's foot against the intricately war-painted sphere and attempting to saw it open with the katana. Komamura, supine and weak from blood loss, muttered a silent apology to his formerly noble zanpakuto spirit.

The Septima Espada's barrier finally began to react. The distorted faces grinned and frowned and chanted foreign mantras, spinning their unsettling eyes in all directions, swaying hypnotically and sliding round each other like a Rubik's cube at great speed, until Leroux's Gemelos activated and their numbers multiplied ever further. The effect was dizzying, disorientating.

Ishida and Tenken stepped back, uncertain; all the yellow irises following the movement, staring mesmerised at the vast soldier. The zanpakuto became speckled by more and more of Zommari's seals, pockmarked by sunflowers with spiked petals and dark pupils. They battled with the Quincy's glimmering spider web, played tug of war against his puppet strands, fraying his mastery of the bankai.

Sajin closed his amber eyes in despair as the samurai turned its blade upon itself, committing seppuku: slashing its stomach wide open and then, when the Quincy failed to appear, beheading itself. Uryuu, exposed in a tumble of blue and white, called out his bow as he fell – unable to quell his instincts – and fired a huge volley of arrows at the Espada's soft, vulnerable eyes. Some punctured, popped, others flinched shut.

Behind him Kokujou Tengen Myou'ou vanished from their dimension with a thunderclap of displaced air, forced to leave by a safety mechanism that prevented the damage he shared with Komamura from growing to lethal levels. Sajin fainted, his body finally his own again.

The plummeting Quincy summoned a wave of reiryoku to brace his fall against the concrete. With a warrior's training, Ishida sought his enemy again as soon as he touched down. But…his eyes met two that had dared not to shut. That his arrows had not burst. He froze in fatal hesitation.

The yellow eyes gleamed with revenge and the tar-black pupils expanded endlessly, swallowing him whole.

"You humans like to accuse us of cardinal sins, and say the worst of these is greed for it is the seed of all other disgrace. You call us greedy out of aristocratic posturing." The mellow voice wrapped around his soul, honey laced with cyanide. "But in fact the greatest of all virtues is fear…"

"…And all we Hollows are doing is facilitating your terror."

Zommari Leroux whispered,

"_Ayahuasca,_"

-and Ishida fell under his witchcraft.

Reality became strange, pulsating, his vision shifting and swirling; hallucinations drifting past as horror, nausea and euphoria tangled together in the back of his mind. Uryuu lurched drunkenly. His hands relaxed, accidentally releasing another quiver-full of burning blue arrows into the arrancar's myriad eyes.

The hold was shattered, tattoos fading from his blanched face, yet the damage had been done.

Ishida wasn't sure what he was doing, whether he stood or fell or spun in circles; if he felt sick or invincible, but all he perceived was knotting dreams in his head and nothing of dangerous reality.

**o)0(o**

"Nemu!" snapped Kurotsuchi. "You're not doing anything useful here. Go aid in the Karakura fight. Akon sent a memo that they're screwing it up."

"Yes, Father." Nemu bowed in brief farewell and summoned a round gate with a twist of her zanpakuto.

"Mayuri, do you want the arrancar's spleen, or shall I put it in the biohazard bin?" called Retsu, muffled by a surgical mask, and with her hands wrist-deep in Szayel Apollo's ribcage.

"There's no harm in having a spare…" mused the mad scientist. "Toss it on ice, I'll find some use for it…"

…Since the Espada was already so still, they hadn't thought to anaesthetise him…

**o)0(o**

Kurosaki Isshin jogged across the cloud-spattered blue sky, grumbling under his breath about the stupidity of his favourite-and-only son, and annoyed that it had taken said son so long to die of curiosity and attempt to follow his father. A few seconds ago, way back on their street, Ichigo had ruptured the pavement and burst a water mains pipe just trying to flash-step into the sky. A fountain of water now marked the hapless boy's ascent into the heavens, and Isshin was considering disowning him. Even by Kurosaki standards it was an embarrassment.

Isshin touched down lightly at the scene of disaster. The living and dying and dead were crying out all around him. He pulled out the new-fangled Soul Phone given to him by Kisuke and flicked through the contacts list.

"Aah, moshi moshi, is this, uhh…Zany…Kuro…Danny…?"

"Kurumadani Zennosuke," corrected the shinigami currently guarding Karakura Town, with years of practice. "Is this urgent? I'm currently liaising at Karakura HQ for extra reinforcements."

"Well, yeah. There's dead people everywhere. They're not taking it very well, if you want my professional doctor's prognosis."

"And…who are you?"

"HA! I'm Kurosaki Isshin, former Captain of the Tenth Division! That darling little Toushiro's predecessor! Father of the Usually Awesome Ichigo! And the Briefly Unstoppable Karin! And the Eternally Cute and Kind Yuzu!"

"Oh." said the shinigami guard flatly. "You."

"My beautiful wife was also a Phenomenal Third Seat, you know…"

"And what do you want me to do that's more important than getting back-up, Kurosaki-ex-taicho?" asked Zennosuke with strained patience, dragging his spare hand through his afro in stress. His work had constantly been interrupted and overshadowed by Isshin's Shinigami Substitute and Karakura Ranger spawn ever since he took over Kuchiki Rukia's post.

"I want you to get over here and start doing the Soul Burials, you idiot. Otherwise we'll have hundreds more Hollows by nightfall right in the middle of town. Dispatch to the western perimeter immediately."

"But the reinforce-"

"HA HA HA!" interrupted Isshin jovially. "I AM THE REINFORCEMENTS! Prepare to be amazed! HA HA HAA!"

"I…uh…ok…"

"FAREWELL MY GOOD FELLOW!" he roared in bad English, snapping the flip-phone shut.

"Alright." He tugged his shihakusho into place (a little odd after years of western trousers), and adjusted the white cloak folded over his left shoulder. "Ready to play, Engetsu? Into the fray!"

**o)0(o**

"Let's see," muttered the reinforcement. "A shinigami, a Quincy and a werewolf walk into a bar..."

He blew on his hands, rubbed them together, and muttered a few words. When they glowed he clapped, and laid his shining green palms on Komamura's wounds. The near-comatose wolf croaked feebly, and Isshin ruffled his head like a pet dog. Probably the first and last to dare do so.

"Don't worry, I'm a doctor," he grinned. "I mean, uh, Fourth Squad. I mean, formerly. Anyway; don't worry."

The deep gashes quickly began to knit together, and the local GP turned to Ikkaku, administrating more fast, efficient healing kido. It was a mark of his skill and experience that no long chants or complex gestures were needed.

Magic was so fast after twenty years of human medical science that he almost felt a little too quick, so he took the time to dig some colourful children's plasters out of his pocket and stick them artistically all over Ikkaku's hands and face. This important masterpiece complete, he administered a sedative to stop the Third Seat officer chewing off his fingers again, and turned back to his other patient.

"You were a brave boy," he praised the recovering dog out of habit, prising open the beast's canines and inserting a lollipop.

Then he looked at Uryuu , who was rolling pathetically on the ground and muttering nonsense to himself; tilted his head, and frowned.

"Have you been on the ganja, lad?"

Isshin dug into his pockets again, always prepared, and pulled out muscle relaxants, morphine, adrenaline shots and flu vaccines.

"I'm not really sure what's up with you... let's think ...eeny meeny miny mo , catch a hollow by its toe, if it eats you let it go, eeny meeny miny mo ! And the winner is... adrenaline!"

"Only if you plan to kill the Quincy," noted Nemu quietly behind him, the senkai gates snapping shut at her heels. Isshin nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Waghh! Who are you?"

"I am Kurotsuchi Nemu, lieutenant of the 12th division."

"Kurotsu...? That guy got married? !"

"Incorrect. I am his daughter."

"That guy got laid?! !"

"You are hypothesizing under the parameters of insufficient data. I was built by him to fulfil the role of his daughter."

"Thank _god_. That makes _so_ much more sense."

"I will take over treatment of the last active Quincy specimen. I urge you to attend to the penultimate Espada."

Isshin smiled indulgently at the mod soul maiden. "There's no rush. He's a strategic little bugger who won't attack till he sees my bankai. Even if he takes over my body now, he doesn't know how I summon my powers."

"How counterintuitive," said the robotic girl disapprovingly. "It is more efficient to delete the enemy before they can access the full extent of their powers."

"Weren't you prepped on this guy's methods by your techie-gami friends?" asked Isshin, mildly surprised and eighty years outdated on slang.

"Hm," was all she said for a moment, parsing data; inserting an intravenous line between her arm and Ishida's. Then she reeled off statistics like a printer spitting out paper.

"Title: Zommari Leroux,  
Age: 47 years since first registered on database,  
Species: Artificial arrancar via exposure to hougyoku, former adjuchas,  
Rank: Septima Espada,  
Abilities: advanced hypnosis, advanced sonido,  
Personality: reverent, zealot, meditative,  
Political views: Aizen -sama will save us,  
Favorite Colour: pink,  
Favourite Food: plus souls,  
Future Aspirations: universal domination,  
Popular Quotations: 'arrogant shinigami' – "

"Enough, _enough_! No wait, what's his favourite TV show?"

"We believe he is not technologically literate." Nemu regarded him with a perfectly straight face. Isshin giggled.

And then he punched himself in the face.

"Oh you impatient lowlife," huffed the doctor, trying to dodge his own fist whilst he clumsily drew his sword with his left hand. "Right, Engetsu, Scathing Moon! Ow!" Isshin closed his eyelids tight and hid his sword behind his back, earning a self-inflicted black eye. "Evaporate, Engetsu!"

The blade glittered like ice, glass, water, bubbling and steaming in his hand until it faded from sight like a ghost in the night.

"Oops," he gasped, opening his empty hands theatrically, like a magician. He shaded his eyes and peered in all directions. "Where did it go? We'll have to resort to fisticuffs, mano a mano."

Zommari cricked his neck from side to side, reaching unnatural angles. "I won't dirty my hands with your worthless blood."

"Oh, certainly not," gasped the former captain. "Neither will I then." He flicked his fingers at the arrancar like a fastidious gentleman flicking dust off his sleeve, and the tiny gesture struck the demon like a sledge hammer. Two of his tribal masks shattered and skidded away in pieces, the remaining shields spinning faster to fill the gap.

Isshin laughed deeply and breathed a great relaxing sigh. "Oh, I missed this. It's so much fun to be a shinigami again."

Leroux's mouth twisted in anger, and the hand he had taken control over was suddenly clenching round Isshin's throat. "With one hand and no sword, you pretend that you can kill me?! This egotism is unbearable!"

Choking on his witty reply, Isshin fumbled in his pockets for the syringes again and jabbed one into his right arm. Then he peered at it more closely, rolled his eyes eloquently (it was the flu vaccine) and reached for a muscle relaxant instead.

"_Come on, methocarbamol…work for Dr Daddy…"_ he thought, panicking.

His face turning purple, his neck darkly bruising, Isshin sucked in oxygen as his fingers slowly uncurled and his arm fell limp by his side. "Just. ..just cause you can't see my zanpakuto...?" He coughed, the delivery utterly ruined. "Gi – give me a sec… Maybe it's right behind you," taunted the reaper grimly, and an invisible force slammed the hollow face-first into the concrete.

Simultaneously, Ichigo landed somewhat as subtly as a neon pink meteorite hitting a rock concert stage. He buried himself up to the knees in pavement because he'd hit the ground too hard. Kicking frantically, he extricated himself, and looked around at the situation.

Komamura, Ikkaku , Uryuu and an Espada were all flaked out on the floor, and his dad was beaming and waving at him energetically. The vaizard's honed distrust tempted him to blame all visible damage on his father.

"Ichigo! Ichigo! Hey Ichigo! Wanna see Daddy's bankai? It's super cool! I promise! "

"Um," said Ichigo. His sandals were full of tarmac shards that he was trying to kick out unsuccessfully. "Sure?"

Bursting with excitement, Isshin threw his empty hands into the air, hopped up and down, calmed himself with great difficulty, assumed what he considered to be a 'meaningful - badass' pose, and finally yelled:

"_**BANKAI!**_ Azakeri-Getsu no Karisome!"_ Transience of the Scornful Moon! _

There was a pause pregnant with suspense, both of them braced for some kind of ungodly impact.

"Oh wow," whistled Ichigo when nothing at all happened. "Ultra cool, Oyaji."

"It's invisible," mewled his father in an emotionally wounded tone.

"And you wanted to 'show' me it?"

"D-don't make assumptions!" spluttered Isshin, gesturing to the decimated surroundings. "Maybe my zanpakuto is the most amazing thing ever, like a... like Bahamut!"

"Maybe you're full of shit," Ichigo was responding, when the Espada spontaneously exploded. He threw his arms over his head in defence, shocked.

"Maybe it's a giant buzz saw," sniffed Isshin, and a high pitched whine filled the air as two of Zommari 's masks slit perfectly in half.

"Maybe it's just hiding because it's so ugly," shot back Ichigo, and something whacked him savagely in the back of the head. He hissed and rubbed the new bruise, looking round but seeing no perpetrator.

"PERHAPS IT'S A FIST OF FATHERLY VENGEANCE!"

"Maybe it's a giant squeaky pow hammer!" mocked Ichigo, starting to twig how the thing worked: just as ridiculous as his father. There was a giant squeak, and one of the masks flattened like a pancake.

"MAYBE IT'S A GETSUGA TENSHOU!" yelled Isshin irately, a vast chasm ripping itself out of the street and the hollow screaming in anguish.

"Woah," croaked Ichigo before he could help himself.

"Or a rain of shuriken! Or a mecha! Or a flamethrower! Or a KAMEHAMEHAAAA!'

What was once an average suburban road now looked like the battlefield of a hundred year war. And every single attack had been invisible, unpredictable and unavoidable.

In the back of Ichigo's head Zangetsu sighed in admiration. "That is a truly impressive zanpakuto… - a shape shifter!"

"I still don't believe it," snorted Ichigo, folding his arms in moody, poorly disguised awe.

**o)0(o**

Meanwhile Uryuu had begun to recover. He opened his eyes to find Kurotsuchi Nemu sitting trimly beside him, doing something that involved IV catheters, and in fear of her father scrambled clumsily away. "What are you doing to me? !"

"I am internally performing blood dialysis to re-stabilise your biochemistry."

Still mentally off-kilter, the future doctor expressed a rush of joy at these medical, geeky words. "Th…that's amazing," he stuttered shyly.

With a perfect poker face, she debriefed him on his status whilst analysing the resulting endorphins in his bloodstream.

"The arrancar was not only controlling your motor functions, but also influencing the hormones, neurotransmitters, heart rate, reflex reactions and myriad other bodily systems that can drive Quincies, among other test subjects, to homeostatic deterioration and sub-optimum behaviours."

The genius considered this very carefully for someone who was still completely stoned and high.

"So for the hallucinogens, he must be forcing the release of some psychedelic compound like Dimethyltryptamine; which the brain releases upon death."

Nemu nodded, pleased to find a kindred scientist. "He is most likely seeking the physical trigger to convert them into Hollows and subordinates."

Straining to be cold, since she was the daughter of his ancestral enemy, Uryuu ventured both an insult and a compliment. "That's a curiously innovative thought for a glorified AI gigai."

"I am a successful experiment." The modified woman's voice was cast in titanium.

"I noticed you have a zanpakuto. Is that artificial too?"

Kurotsuchi Nemu's demeanour became oddly human and open for a moment. "…I theorize that the day a true zanpakuto spirit chooses me, will prove that I am a real person."

Uryuu couldn't help it. He was drugged after all. He melted. "I believe in you."

"Um…I appear to be slightly exothermic, excuse me." The successful experiment stammered, blushing.

**o)0(o**

"I don't know how you're controlling us, but it'll never work on my gorgeous zanpakuto," boasted Kurosaki Isshin, strutting around with his hands tucked behind his head, Engetsu doing all the work without his effort.

"The act of observation influences reality," rumbled Leroux, wounded by Isshin's onslaught. "It is a universal truth."

"But you'll never be _able_ to observe Engetsu. He's too awesome for mere retinas to comprehend!"

The Hollow emerged from his nest of masks; they unfolded around him like blooming lotus petals, revealing his true form at last: an angry curse. He fixed a baleful glare on Isshin, and Isshin spun in circles once or twice, looked behind himself in surprise and cooed, "Azakeri-Getsu! I can see you at last! You're so…so…!"

And skipped off chasing dreams.

"Hey," Ichigo called for attention. "Hey! Pentacular! What did that guy do to my dad? He's more fucked in the head than usual, and no one's even hit him yet."

Uryuu struggled to sit up, leaning on Nemu for balance. "…Kurosaki…did you come here not knowing the dangers? If he gets you we're all dead!"

"So I should…?"

"Hide! You imbecile!"

Ichigo obeyed grudgingly, complaining about Ishida's contradicting orders under his breath.

"If? If? You are all, already, under my dominion. See me. Listen to me. Face your grievous flaws."

All the fighters looked up, heads skewed like puppets.

It is customary for witchdoctors to disguise themselves with mysteries and the skins, horns, tusks, manes of animals, and dealings with foreign spirit entities. They call upon the unknown, they walk a dreaming road. But in a realm where all were deformed and beastlike, where secrets had no hiding places in the barren dunes, and where all were malignant spirits: Zommari had taken the opposite path.

He wore the shape of a man as if it were esoteric; he had travelled straight through intoxication and emerged on the other side sober, with a super-sane clarity of mind. And where all other hollows lost the trappings of life he had discarded them freely, devouring religion instead, never ceasing to seek higher powers.

However he no longer wished to praise these greater beings. Only coerce and conquer them. He recited his beliefs like sutras, passing judgement on his subjects.

"Destruction, Ageing, Loneliness, Despair, Madness, Intoxication… these are the aspects of life that result in death. Yet intoxication is also the root of all forms of life. The cardinal sins are the tools of our survival, our procreation. They are good medicine.

"But you are all self-styled false idols in a delirium of hubris, vanity, bellicosity, envy, righteous lies and deceitful rights. You are each poisoned by cravings to kill my brothers, in thrall to your addiction to survival. You are sickening from hormones and dependencies, with justice and avarice no different to my own.

"I am your antidote. I will cure your ill humours with simple magic tricks... This mental deficiency whereby you spare the life of an ant, fear for the health of a man, consume the flesh of all crawling beasts and hunt the trophies called Hollows.

"Be honest. See them all the same. Hunt all things, consume all things, fear only for yourself, and spare none. This is the law of nature you forgot. This is the world's true justice."

"I never forgot it," stated Ichigo, growing bored of the chatter, stepping towards the enemy in plain view, an easy target. "But that doesn't mean I have to do things your way."

"It matters not what shape your sins take, for I came not to break your vices, but to fulfil them."

There was a strange leer creeping over Ichigo's face, and what was stranger still was that he didn't fight it. There was no struggling against his inner hollow now, no denial of his broken soul. They had become one and the same, a different mood, but a willing choice. "You want to scare me? Tell you what; since you make such fancy speeches…Your _death_ would intoxicate _me_."

The eyes opened, wide, bright, mesmerising, all focused on him, all swelling with reiatsu.  
Ichigo kept walking forwards, growing leaner, taller, paler; gaunt and vicious. He placed a clawed hand on the witchdoctor's shoulder, pushing him down, drawing him in, looming over him.

"It's – _so tempting_ – to _eat_you right now…" Hichigo's voice danced out of Ichigo's mouth.

Leroux's face was spiteful, critical. "'You are like your sister. Not a Hollow but a devil; artificially created without knowing true anguish. You have thrown nothing away. You are still judged for all your sins."

Ichigo twitched, rigid, blackened eyes glowing red with spite. His true voice, full of rage, drowned out Hichigo's sibilant threats. "You _dare_ even _mention_my little sister and I'll rip all of your eyes out, and peel your skin off with my fingernails, and –"

"_Amor_," rumbled the Espada. "Obey me out of addiction to the heart you forfeit."

Sunburst marks appeared all over Ichigo's semi-transformed spirit, and Uryuu hit his head against the ground in despair.

"We are so dead."

"What's he doing?" bleated Ichigo to his friend, father and colleagues, moments before Zommari Leroux's magic eclipsed him.

"He's taking complete control over you, you IDIOT!" yelled Ishida.

"Oh." And then Hichigo's buzzing voice turned strangely calm. "Does he know how?"

"This is how I clean up the mess left by my feeble compatriots," hissed the Septima Espada. "Become a loyal soldier to Aizen-sama's noble rebellion, just like Tenebra Shirojos was, and decimate your former allies under our dominion."

The powerful, the unstoppable, the indestructible Ichigo… stepped back. His head lowered, mask half present, his blade-like horns cowed. Zommari continued to speak, declaring his strength, because not one of his audience were capable of interrupting him.

"I have one hundred eyes and one hundred thralls. Despite the few you have blinded, I still have enough vision to see the world in my grasp. There are only four who rank above me in Hueco Mundo now, and their superiority will soon be irrelevant. There are twenty-six elite in Soul Society, and I have Amor for all of them. I shall look down upon the Spirit King, and still there will be fifty eyes remaining to guard my back. What value is rank or reiatsu next to the depth of my Amor?"

He turned to Isshin, releasing the illusion of his zanpakuto's true appearance that the man was so distracted by. "All religions state that all things are at heart one, and my voodoo will enact this. As one who sees the truth behind the deceit of reality, my sovereignty comes as nature intended."

"Though you are not all necessary. I'll feed you to the devil under my thumb."

He invited Isshin closer. The former captain followed helplessly. "Kurosaki Ichigo. Here is your first step towards Zen. Consume all things. Become one with all things, and start with the ones closest already. Devour him."

The half-monster jeered, eager, and the Hollow felt disconcerted for his subordinates were only meant to obey, never agree.

Ichigo devolved deeper into his Hollow form, and his father looked into the flat red eyes of the demon; wondered if Shirosaki Hichigo had ever acknowledged him as a father, or being unborn, felt no kinship or loyalties at all. His body drenched in sweat, soaked by fear, unable to flee or fight.

A talon hand stretched out.

Uryuu somehow couldn't close his eyes, compelled to witness their last moments. And then, he had no idea why, Urahara appeared beside him, leaned down and yelled at his neck–

"SHOOT HIM, RYUUKEN!"

And a vast arctic blue light like Haley's Comet surged past, shattering the air into crystals of pure deafening clamour, striking the epicentre of chaos with chilling precision and cutting straight through it.

Hichigo caught the arrow barehanded; an arrow that Uryuu had feared might even kill a Vasto Lorde when he'd fired at Sado Yasutora. It sucked voraciously at his twisted reiatsu, consuming it and spitting it outside the universe. With the utmost cruelty, the vaizard turned to his unwitting victim and offered the shocked arrancar a choice.

"I think this is for you," smirked Hichigo.

Zommari reared back from the blue arrow, the most fearful demise.

"Be eaten alive, or erased by Quincies? Some kind of shitty existence, or absolute freedom? I'm not a dictator like you… I'll let you choose."

"But you're a shinigami, a vaizard…" the Espada struggled to speak, words crumbling in his warped mouth. "Your zanpakuto should…it's meant to…"

"Oh, you knew that, did you?" Ichigo seemed to soften slightly, lowering the incandescent arrow. "But I left Zangetsu-jii at home, so I guess it's 'as nature intended'…"

"Such conceit…I'll let neither Hollows nor Shinigami nor Quincy nor anyone destroy me! I alone am sovereign over myself!" Every eye was weeping blood, every trace of his calm and measured personality was erased.

"But you said me and Karin were devils," added the One-Who-Protects vindictively, snapping the arrow in his fist. "Guess you'll just go straight to Hell."

The Septima Espada fought back, transfixing the demon in every one of his hundred eyes, a voodoo doll, a submissive pawn. He discarded his chance to conquer Aizen, the Spirit King, the massed forces of Seireitei, in the name of surviving a much closer threat. "Surrender! Let go of your instinct, your fight… let your will break down… be neutral, be still."

Ichigo closed his eyes, obedient, relaxing completely. The deep frown worn into his forehead fading away. Doing nothing more than not holding back, and not attacking at all.

The first pulse of reiatsu soaring up like a dam breaking.

"What is this?" tremored Leroux, shrinking away from the acidic heat, not a blunt pressure like normal reiatsu, but a corrosive fire. It seared him, right next to the source, in the greatest danger from his own slave.

"What's happening? Should we have completed the Luck Luck Dance?" demanded Komamura, spitting out the lollipop inexplicably in his mouth as Ikkaku snored in blissful ignorance to the side of him.

"I forgot about this," fretted Uryuu, and Nemu attempted to filtrate the worry out of his bloodstream. She was learning a great deal about emotional range from this experiment. "Forgot what?" she asked blithely, as Mayuri had never given her a sense of self-preservation.

Isshin sprinted back to them, babbling kido at the speed of a rap singer, the eyes that enslaved him seemingly melted just by exposure to Ichigo's passive energies.

"My poor little baby!" he chattered in panic, jogging around inserting kido barrier sticks into the circumference of the battlefield. "Ever since he became a shinigami, you know, Itsygo's always had to hold himself back!"

"Kurosaki-san! Kurosaki-san! You've left us INSIDE the barrier!"

"Well, it's meant to protect Karakura, actually…"

"We're going to die," muttered Ishida miserably, and Nemu learnt the taste of imminent demise.

Urahara Kisuke regarded the soul pressure oozing out of his protégé like a volcanic eruption, as viscous and incendiary as molten lava, and fanned himself timidly. "Really," he scolded half-heartedly, as a gust blew his hat away. "Such a terrifying child I created. I clearly don't know my own genius!"

Benihime rattled in her cane-sword sheath, and Kisuke patted her gingerly. "Don't _you_ get too overexcited, now. I certainly can't handle both of you at once."

The world began to quake…

**o)0(o**

"Hm?" murmured Ichigo, coming back to his senses, absent-mindedly licking crumbs of burnt arrancar off his white fingers. "Espada BBQ flavour," he mused, then remembered who he was and spat the ashes of Zommari Leroux out of his mouth. "Gah!"

His hair had grown long and annoying, like a L'Oreal advert, swishing in the heat wave generated by his accidental combustion. His black shihakusho was ripped artistically, but not very practically at all. Black concrete was now white powder under his tasselled feet. Ichigo looked himself over unhappily, was this really what he'd been turning into? His mask had fallen to the ground and he stared at its disintegrating shape, remembering how small and simple it had been when it first started haunting him.

'_Small? You were shitting yourself!'_ his Hollow reminded him indignantly.

There was nothing but eerie red jade all around him. He tapped it, and it cracked. It seemed vaguely familiar.

"Yo? Any survivors?" he called softly.

"…No…" called back a voice he knew very well, just as softly.

"That's an oxymoron," the vaizard whispered in reply, feeling it would be painfully ironic if his irritating father was the sole survivor.

"…YOU'RE an oxy-moron, Itsygo!"

Yep. Painful.

"Ne, Kurosaki-kun…are you decent?" trilled a dreaded voice, and Ichigo shuddered slightly. Fucking Urahara. They hadn't spoken since Ichigo stole the bankai contraption and severely pissed the convenience store owner off. "I sincerely hope you won't go skipping about without Zangetsu _ever, ever _again – your Inner Hollow is the most atrocious one-year-old I've ever encountered!"

"Oh, this is…Benihime's Blood Mist," realised Ichigo, poking the crimson wall more forcefully until enough huge chunks fell out and he could escape.

"Wow, Itsygo, I never knew your Hollow was so buff! Impressive!" grinned his father, whom he reflexively kicked into a surviving streetlamp several metres away. "Good shot, my son!"

"Um…" said Uryuu, facing his emerging frenemy and rival. "Nice look…Kurosaki…actually I could definitely do something with that hair…maybe some skulls, some Xs…a bit gothic Lolita perhaps…?"

"How about you just pimp your cape and leave me alone?" snapped Ichigo, tugging at his flowing locks in the hopes that they'd vanish faster. "I can't believe you shot me! What's that one called, Lone Heat-Seeking Nuclear Missile on a Purple Cliff?"

Ishida looked both enraged and embarrassed, adjusting his glasses. "Actually it was my father who shot you."

"Have I met him?" asked the gradually-becoming-more-Ichigo-shaped teenager wearily.

Uryuu shook his head, but Isshin popped back up full of cheer. "You have! He was the midwife at your birth! Ryuuken's the first person you ever met!"

Ichigo and Uryuu choked, eyes locking in horror at this unholy knowledge.

"And I was the midwife at Uryuu's birth!" sang Doctor Kurosaki.

"We will never speak of this again," proposed the Last Quincy in a civil voice.

"Agreed," vowed the Shinigami Substitute, and they shared a gentlemanly handshake.

**o)0(o**

"This is going well," smiled Aizen, relaxing with his chin in his hand, and Tousen nodded.

"None of our former colleagues have died," noted the blind man, not showing whether he regarded this statement as positive or negative.

"And they've cleaned up all our loose ends for us. Only the Tenth is left."

"Yammy Riyalgo?"

"Yammy," agreed Sousuke pleasantly. "The weakest, strongest, biggest, stupidest; most _crucial_ Espada."

**o)0(o**

_**Shinigami Cup: Golden!**_

**o)0(o**

Nemu: It was by navigating the tightrope of homeostasis that my captain successfully manufactured me.  
Uryuu: So how many failed versions are there?  
Nemu: My basic body was created to be resilient. I am Nemu version . For your research I can recite the process notes for each stage of the design, prototyping and crafting.  
Ryuuken: _Why_ did he create you?  
Nemu: I am an autonomous research droid, storage facility and originally a crash test dummy.

**o)0(o**

Mayuri: Nemu, who are you texting?  
Nemu: I am studying the mating rituals of the highly endangered Quincy subspecies.  
Mayuri: Well my research can't really progress without fresh test subjects, so go ahead…  
Nemu: Father, for my Modification birthday this year, may I have a uterus?  
Mayuri: No, in fact I've just decided that Quincy research is obsolete and am banning all further study of them from this moment forth. Now go to your tank and stay there.

**o)0(o**

**If Leroux had possessed Komamura:  
**  
Zommari: And now you are subordinate to me! Sit! Lie down! Roll over!  
Komamura: Arf! (Houses are steamrollered as Tenken imitates his master.)  
Zommari: Good doggy. Now give me your paw.  
Komamura: Woof! (Leroux is smushed under Tenken's gauntlet.)  
Isshin: Poor Kokujou Tengen Myou'ou. What does he do if Sajin wants to wag his tail?  
Ichigo: Komamura has a tail?  
Isshin: Hoho, we all have one, my son.  
Ichigo: …I hate you.

**o)0(o**

Isshin: Well now that our successful first Father Son Bonding Fieldtrip is over - - carry me home, foolish son!

Ichigo: What? Walk by yourself!

Isshin: Actually the methocarbamol has spread and I can't feel my legs anymore…

Ichigo: Metho – Dad, you said methocarbamol was for horses! Argh! I'm dragging you to the hospital!

Isshin: No way, I'm not letting Ryuuken see me like this…  
Ichigo: Fitting revenge…

Isshin: …You are evil… I have taught you well.

**o)0(o**

_**Chapter Notes:**__ Ayahuasca is the name of the drink witchdoctors use to get high._

_Methocarbamol is indeed a muscle relaxant for treating horses._

_Uryuu's 'gothic lolita' comment is taking the mickey out of Ichigo's many costume changes since the manga rebooted._

_Brujeria is the proper name for Zommari's zanpakuto, and is Spanish for 'witchcraft', I think. Also Kubo apparently said in an interview that he intended Zommari to be the strongest Espada originally, so I was aiming for that. And yeah, about his wardrobe change. HE WAS SO UGLY. And PINK. He's the reason I stopped watching the anime! Holy crap! So I hope you liked his reinvention._

_So, author-life…I am now living in China, I smashed my beloved laptop on the first day, it's been a bit crazy. Also I tend to write a lot of HB on my phone these days (which is why I didn't lose anything important when the laptop splodied), and I'd like to share some lovely autocorrect bloopers with you:_

_Ichigo = Inigo_

_Zommari = Zucchini_

_Nemu = Menu  
How can rank compare to the depth of my Amor? = How can rank compare to the depth of my Snot?_

_34 pages, 12,200 words: Review!_

_P.S. Hell Butterfly has now passed the 200,000 word landmark! _

_Alliriyan~*_


	45. Split Peach

**Hell Butterfly**

**Split Peach**

**~45~**

**o)0(o**

Karin and the hand of judgment remain frozen, breathless, staring deep into each other - the milky cataracts and scarred cornea, the bony fingers and raw skin of a denizen of hell who is torn apart eternally and never allowed to heal - balancing against the crisp grey eyes of a child lost in ground zero, so powerless she cannot even sense the devil's aura. The moment spools out like silkworm thread, brittle but unbroken. All words are fled, as she has but one fear and the gatekeeper's hand has no mouth with which to speak.

_So it was me?_

Jagged black fingernails shriek against the glass between but do not dare condemn her.  
The eyeball buried in the centre of its rotten palm rolls back in agony, twitching, and when it twists back to spit her once again something wriggles in the murky depth of its pupil, a maggot hatching from its bursting lens.

Karin shudders. Creeps backwards, stomach a queasy knot, beads of icy sweat rolling down her grey face. Her human heart thudding.

The insect crawls out, slippery with amniotic fluids, fragile legs skidding against the membrane of an orb that was not an eye, but its living chrysalis. Unfurling damp skeleton leaf wings, the pale death's head moth points its skull left and right; seeking.

Within moments the gossamer butterfly takes flight, skittering zigzags that suddenly dart straight through the glass: barriers worthless against a creature that lives in the slivers between dimensions.

The terrifying hand curls into a fist and withdraws, seeping a trail of brackish blood across the rooftops of Seireitei as the soaring gates of hell swallow it and clang shut…

The surreal atmosphere slowly ebbed away, spatial awareness returning, and she finally heard the wretched hacking cough behind her.

Ukitake Juushiro had sunk to the floor, suffocated by great heaving gasps. Every lung-racking choke stained his white haori red as he spat up blood. Although the little girl had felt nothing, the gatekeeper's mere presence had proved malicious enough to trigger his old illness.

In shock, she only watched him curl up and retch from his tuberculosis, unable to help.

Barely a minute passed before Hinamori Momo, Vice-Captain of the new Fifth Squad medical division, burst in through the heavy oak door of Yamamoto's office in a flurry of kido. She was already Juushiro's attending nurse despite her short time in the medical field. Automatically notified whenever the unlucky Thirteenth Captain suffered an attack of his lifelong disease, she had grown adept at dropping everything and sprinting to his rescue. Ukitake was, after all, the most widely-liked shinigami in Soul Society.

"Shouldn't you be attending to the countless other casualties?" he asked as soon as he had recovered enough to speak, feeling like a never-ending burden.

"Paramedics have already been dispatched to Rukongai and all areas of conflict," reported Momo in between rapid healing chants, and a sensation of blessed relief settled over his aching ribcage.

"Still, you should be on the front lines, not mopping up after an old man's old problem."

"You're one of our strongest captains, and many of the others have been incapacitated. There's a staggering amount of torn-off arms. Ukitake-taicho, you could become the front line at any time!" Since her rehabilitation, Hinamori had become fluent, confident and efficient, taking to medical kido like a fish to water - which her previous pursuit of Aizen Sousuke had prevented her discovering before.

"Besides," revealed the fukutaicho, showing him an intricate cat's cradle of magic entwined around her fingers; "I didn't actually stop what I was doing."

Juushiro sat back and breathed deeply, allowing himself to relax a little. To process recent events. "I haven't seen kido precision like that since first meeting Unohana-chan, even if your reiatsu is naturally much lower. You're secretly some prodigy like your friend Shiro-chan, aren't you?"

Hinamori grew sad at the mention of her childhood nickname for Hitsugaya-taicho. Then she recognised a much deeper despondency mirrored on her patient's face. "What's troubling you Ukitake-san?" pressed Momo, eager to repay this benevolent man with some of the emotional support he always gave but never seemed to need.

"I'm disappointed," sighed the white-haired man, brushing a hand over the commonplace spatters on his uniform. His white cloak actually had a red lining just so he could use it as a handkerchief in emergencies. An emergency, of course, being when there was nothing to mop up the mess. "Tired and sorely disappointed."

"But...we're winning every battle? We're in a war with barely more than ten opponents and no officers have fallen! This is...not nearly as widespread as it could be?" She spoke haltingly, still haunted by the memories of her leader, her oldest friend, her comrades all run through with treacherous blades and lying in their own blood. Still pained by her identical wounds.

"I have been slowly dying my entire life of an illness no one could ever explain.

And a thousand years after committing myself to Soul Society's ideals, I still find _children_ like this dragged to pandemonium and back as if no one had ever tried to protect them! She was in mortal fear right before my eyes and all I could do was collapse! It makes me grieve for a millennium of being held back by my weak health, when I think how much I could have done."

Alarmed by his sorrow, Momo could only pat his arm in empathy, aware that the word 'children' for the ancient captain covered ninety-nine percent of soul society.

He looked at Karin, who had died so young, and seen so much, now huddled by the window with a thousand-yard stare.

"And being from Rukongai perhaps you never considered how sad it is for the children of noble families: to be born dead and never have lived. Some tell it that every rare birth in Soul Society is a miscarriage from the real world. At least if I had been born there, I could have blamed my debilitation on the intricacy of genetics.

"However a defect of the soul is almost symbolic of spiritual failure. This is not what I aimed for all these centuries. I am sorry to put all this on your shoulders, Momo-chan, but I must admit I get a little depressed when I am ill -and I have experienced so many of these wars...so many."

He began to cough again, a bitter tear falling from his eye.

Karin 's quavering voice drifted between them.

"Don't you people have inhalers?" asked the doctor's daughter, the first thing she'd said since Hell had waved hello. It was a last ditch attempt to remain herself, her sarcastic, unflappable, swiftly-vanishing self.

The translucent insect was still fluttering around her head, a wasp crawling into her ear to sting her brain with secrets and horror stories.

"Then...then he could treat himself," concluded the girl, covering her ears with her hands and shaking her head furiously to dislodge the pale hell butterfly, her eyes squeezed shut and tears pouring down.

_"Leave me alone!"_

**o)0(o**

Hinamori pattered out of the office on quick feet and hurried past the whitewashed wall that still warped her sleep into nightmares. The scene of her captain's false execution, the symbol of all that had gone wrong. With her eyes averted she almost didn't notice a dishevelled stranger staring up at the faded stains, with all the melancholy she could not allow herself to show.

His face flickered at the edge of her vision, and she felt his hesitant smile burn her back, her pace slowing, her heart skipping, her lungs winded by a tiny impossibility.

She'd been fighting this memory for months. Straightening her back and keeping her head stiffly forwards, she took a resolute step.

"Don't! Don't be blinded by the past...this is not..." The voice, familiar in tone, alien in its vulnerability, cut her to the quick. Her hands clenched briefly over her stomach, the red scars there aching.

The trespasser's speech dwindled, muted.

She willed herself to leave. She very nearly managed to. Until-

"I'm so incredibly sorry, Hinamori. Let me explain –"

She screwed her eyes shut, her mouth shut, her heart shut, but she could not close her ears. She could not hear no evil.

"Even if you never believe me, you must at least _listen_-"

"There's nothing! Nothing!" She shouted, rigid. "There's not a single word between us. Not between you or anyone else in the universe!"

"Momo,"

"Tobiume," she replied, drawing her zanpakuto with insecure rage.

"I never hurt you or wished you harm," whispered the visitor, and she whirled to face him in disbelief, her jitte sword sparking.

"Liar!" she gasped, shocked by his blatant mistruths. "You think you can still manipulate me because I'm vulnerable?"

Sousuke's face crumpled. He sat down heavily, too weak to stand, and buried his head in his hands. "You were _the only one_ who would have _listened_-"

"I listened to every word you ever said, and everything you left unsaid! But they were the make believe of a man who never even existed! Aizen-_taicho!_"

Tobiume flared and spat ball lightning at the imposter, and the shade of a dead man just accepted the denial helplessly.

He flinched, he bled; wept freely.

"I was framed!"

She turned and left, discarding the many chains of kido coiled about her fingers and commencing a red alert to all of the Gotei Thirteen.

"I was enslaved by my own reflection, Momo," whispered the traitor numbly. "By Kyouka Suigetsu."

He slid sideways in a dead faint, and she sprinted to catch him.

**o)0(o**

Momo had never considered herself weak. For starters, the Japanese legend Momotaro had been born from a peach and become a powerful demon hunter. There was nothing weak about peaches, and she had done the same. Her skills in kido, whether the combat hado or the assistive bakudo, were second only to Isane among the fukutaichos. And she had fought her way up to this rare rank, of which there were only thirteen posts in all of Soul Society. But she had achieved it, because there was only _one_ post she wanted. She had chosen her goal, stuck to it, and reached it.

Aizen-taicho had been a man worth fighting for and alongside.

She'd believed that with all her heart, and quietly adored him for so long that the sentiment was automatic in her mind. It was small wonder she was having trouble letting it go now.

Those short, fast, panicked days had been a living nightmare. Her taicho horrifically murdered, pinned high on a wall like a butterfly in a collection, except insects lack such a messy river of blood flooding down the whitewashed plaster and bricks.

A letter, a letter she'd seen him write if not read it, and knew not to be a forgery. It had been given to her guiltily, in secret, and she had clutched at it ravenously. Yet it had made her feel sick when it painted Shiro-chan as the murderer. In the bloodless bonds of Soul Society he was the closest thing she had to a little brother, but here the icy dragon had been denounced as a treacherous snake; by the one hand she could not ignore.

_"If I should die, please carry on my work, and kill him for me."_

Those were not the words of a man who thought she was weak and was playing with her blind infatuation. Those were the words of a man who trusted her and her alone, furthermore believed her capable of taking his vengeance against a captain of the Gotei.

Aizen had called her strong.

So why, in this horrific ordeal of shinigami against shinigami, friend against friend, why had she been reduced to a weeping, wilting, tumbling peach blossom; ripped from her steady bough and torn apart by the winds of lies? When did she become so weak and her resolve so flimsy, her mind so shell-shocked and scattered?

Drifting in and out of a medically imposed coma, because the squads who relied on her could no longer trust her...

She had no one to blame for the misdeeds of Aizen, who had been the architect of his own rebellion. She had no one to fight and take her rage and grief out on. But the deepest scar was that she could no longer trust herself after such a spectacular failure to see through the designs of the man she most aspired to.

Out there, everyone else was carrying on and fighting for the sake of Soul Society. She wasn't alone in her loss - all of Seireitei had respected Aizen Sousuke, and every last one of them felt his absence as keenly as a knife in their back.

But she was perhaps the only one who had set that captain as her purpose in life, rather than the eternal war against the Hollows.

Hinamori had been tossed back into that turbulent state, a leaf in a hurricane. If he had hoped to lull her into old securities he was sorely mistaken. All her recurring nightmares had woken from their fitful slumber.

She had not called the alert in the end. This could only be a diversion. A dog's last play with a favoured bone before it cracked down and swallowed the marrow. Better only she be distracted. Better only one casualty. Better to keep away from the friends who would only stab her again, all unknowing.

And now he had returned, saying the exact same thing. That he had been swept asunder by lies, by his zanpakuto – the other half of his soul; deceived by his own perception.

As he spoke, quiet and shaken, much of the unconscious confidence he'd radiated in the past drained from him; his trials sounded even worse than hers.

_He had been lifted by the throat and slammed against the rough stone wall, cold steel shearing through skin and muscle and ribs and lungs and spine and brick. Pain – blinding, blood – a waterfall, and the shock of betrayal – like the blow he had just received, leaving him winded, speechless with no counter._

_The rivulets of red blood seeping down the wall pulsed, his vision rippling as if all his pain was no more than a reflection in a lake, distorted by a breath of wind. He had no idea whether he was experiencing or only observing his own demise. He felt it beneath his skin, but watched it from afar._

_The vision melted and poured away, like his blood, and another replaced it. But this made even less sense – himself, embracing Hinamori, and then letting her slide to the ice-slicked floor with a katana in her stomach. He saw Hitsugaya eaten by his own dragon, in a single bite of icicle fangs; watched the ginger-haired ryoka cast aside his sword and sanity and turn into a Hollow, fleeing the shadow of Aizen across the sands of Hueco Mundo. He saw every captain of the Gotei Thirteen fall, saw pale Vasto Lordes feast upon Karakura Town and then further afield, saw what chaos reigned when the zanpakuto spirits abandoned their ungrateful slavers. He saw Gin and Rangiku die in each other's arms, but feared that had not been illusion._

_He hung motionless, trapped in mirages and nightmares, an endless parade of war and carnage and destruction; having all the horrors that shinigami strove to prevent thrown in his face with every waking moment. Feeling every wound physically, and grieving for his lost friends, only to have each scene melt away and never know who lived or who died._

**o)0(o**

Sousuke regarded her placidly. That in itself was wrong, his submission, his reliance on her. He had been her support, her target, her leader – Aizen-taicho should be taking command.

"This is a farce," as brutal as she could bring herself to be.

"I don't mistake your kindness for weakness," said Aizen, a cry back to the day Momo had bested two other lieutenant hopefuls, male seated officers, to take her cherished post at his side. He had admonished them with the very same words before helping the pair limp to Fourth with a cheerful smile back at his new fukutaicho.

"Why else would you target me as the weakest link?" demanded Hinamori, wearing a fierce glare, but that was met with a look of faint surprise.

"When did you begin to perceive yourself in that way?" asked Sousuke, tinged with melancholy. "You cannot be blamed for stumbling on the hardships that unmade your leaders; when I myself have been chained and my powers siphoned from me like a keg of wine for years on end! I hadn't even the strength to whisper my fear."

They shared a despondent look, a new connection forged between them deeper than all previous. She felt a little absolved of the mental trauma she had heaped upon herself, too afraid to blame the two captains she most adored, Shiro-chan and Sousuke-san. But still words repeated to her after rang in her ears:

"_I conditioned her. Groomed her to be unable to live without me. Killing her is a kindness, so she won't suffer when I am gone." _As if all her efforts had been his game of whimsy and not her fierce aspirations. She chewed her lip in suspicion.

"What freed you then? Why is now any different?"

"His complacency as victory creeps closer. But the only weapon I have against Kyouka is your faith in me, Hinamori. Is that enough to discover whether a mirror can bleed? We don't have time to waste. I believe, I'm...almost certain you're not another illusion." His brown eyes studied her warily, the large doe eyes, stubborn clench of her jaw, the familiar old silk cloth from her grandmother that hemmed her hair in its bun.

"You're not in a position to be doubting me!" How could he cast aspersions on _her_, after sinking so low as to join forces with the Menos?

He still wore his old uniform and snow-white cloak, though both were ragged from his treatment under the tender mercies of Kyouka Suigetsu. "I understand. I have no wish to lead you astray. The fate of all our colleagues, all our dependents, all our world order lies in the balance. But we must act swiftly. I have no doubt that my last taste of freedom will be regretfully brief..." He stared at the horizon, the cluster of Seireitei spreading away down the hill. His home.

Hinamori moved towards him purposefully, catching his large hand in one small palm and splaying her other fingers across his chest, above the heart.

"Hollow Chant Number Twelve," she said carefully, the kido likely to backfire on her with crippling intensity if she performed it incorrectly. Her former captain's face twisted in concern for her, the beat beneath her hand skipped. "The four-faced god guards the cardinal paths, lightning strikes faithfully if his eye withers. A spear severs the flinching of a dove that sings without sin, a trident grazes the heartbeat of a lion that roars in empty innocence. The Libra weighs; the Scorpio stings with true damnation and the Virgo lies in immaculate grace. _Osiris Feathers!_"

Biting her lip, she glanced up at him. The last time they had been this close she had nearly died. "Speak truly now, or forever hold your peace."

Sousuke was silent for a moment, remembering.

He spoke without fear.

"I am Aizen Sousuke. I have never sympathised with or aimed to emancipate the Hollows. I am not the one currently attacking Soul Society. I never incited the weakest of the Espada to attack Karakura." He had warned her already that the Decima arrancar would be the next to strike. The kido held steady, his heart did not stop.

"My zanpakuto is the most dangerous opponent in this war. I was framed as a traitor. Kyouka Suigetsu takes the form of a mirror, with the power of illusions and imitation and perfect reflection. He binds within hallucinations and deceives the senses."

For a minute Aizen closed his eyes, battling the ache of old wounds or perhaps choosing his next words with utmost care.

"Hinamori, it is vital that you fully comprehend this. Kyouka matches anything he sees. If the Commander were to go all out in single combat against my zanpakuto, he would be facing a power as terrible as himself - in addition to the captain level power he drains constantly from me to create his advantage - and if he surrounds himself with Vasto Lordes, arrancars, captains, enemies, allies, simple onlookers - he can pool their strength and channel the copy of it. Is that clear?"

"Then-how are we meant to stop you?"

"I believe myself to be beyond saving by you, and I cannot say whether killing me now would weaken my zanpakuto's tyranny. There is only one being that can overcome a perfect doppelganger...and that is a power beyond the limitations of our reality, a power that exceeds itself, that breaks rules, that can shatter Kyouka's infinite mirror."

"…beyond our world?"

"Suigetsu may jeer that the throne of heaven is empty and awaiting him, but I believe Yamamoto's old friend would disagree."

"The Spirit King? !" She threw the realisation in his face, jilted. "But what was the point? If your outcome was going to be the same - if your zanpakuto is going to be struck down the moment it stands before the king - there was no need to come here; to me!"

"You seem certain our friends will not stop…'me'."

"You spoke under geas. I'm forced to believe you. So why?"

And suddenly his smile was heartbreaking. "Because I wanted you to believe I was innocent. For the sake of all that has gone before, I wanted to know if any of the comrades I fought beside for so long had a shred of faith left in me. Whether a certain loyal lieutenant of mine could see past the facade."

"And is there no way I can save you?" begged the girl, her voice cracking. "What am I meant to do, knowing all this? I can't help anyone with this knowledge?"

"You can. Because the destination may be inevitable, but the road is still in question."

"I, I understand... I'll negotiate with the commander..."

"There are ways and _ways_ of obtaining the King's Key," murmured Sousuke in conclusion, and she felt ice slip down her spine at the foreboding in his voice.

Before she dashed away, she released the Osiris Feathers binding him and mustered up her courage to embrace him, the first last and only time she would be able to show how much he'd meant to her all those years. He returned the sentiment after a hesitation, a tentatively mutual feeling, a last cling to the life that had been stolen from him.

She pulled away regretfully, no knife between her ribs, no lies between them, but time was short.

"Momo," he whispered, his kind eyes crinkling at her just like the old days, behind the simple glasses that he was a little useless without. "I chose you because you knew me best. You are the only person in all the four worlds that can help me now."

Her mouth was wavering, her composure fracturing, her hand rested above his heart ever so briefly before she ran for the hills.

"Farewell," she keened into the wind; "I loved you."

**o)0(o**

Momo burst back into the office. "Ukitake-taicho! The Tenth Espada is approaching Karakura Town! You need to dispatch someone to intercept him!"

"Yammy? Is he the last one?" asked Karin, currently using one of the Soutaicho's antique cups to trap her butterfly foe. Yet each time she caught it, it would magically reappear across the room. It was infuriating, but not as bad as when it spoke. "Yammy's weak and dumb. Send anyone. Didn't – didn't Rukia kill Aaroniero before she was even a lieutenant? Gotcha!" There was a shattering noise, and half the porcelain cup scattered across the hardwood desk. "Oops."

"You need to stop reading Shiro-chan's paperwork behind his back!" scolded Ukitake. "As captains we have a duty to maintain confidentiality. And you said the arrancars had been gorging since then. He could have any level of strength."

"I doubt it," argued the Kurosaki girl distractedly, trying to fit the jigsaw formerly called a cup back together. "He never joined in properly. He just ate and slept but I never saw him go all out. He could even be too thick to get back to his unsealed form, for all I know."

"I'll go myself," decided the captain of the Thirteenth Squad. "If he's weak, it won't strain me, if not, it'll require experience to put him down. Hinamori, keep everyone informed."

"Yes!" she blurted out with a guilty start. "I'll report to the Soutaicho now. Good luck, Ukitake-taicho."

Karin waited until she had left and the girly-haired captain's senkai gate was almost shut, before slipping through after him with an innocent whistle.

**o)0(o**

He had arrived just in time, and just in the right place. A black seam was opening in the centre of the wide, empty road. After the catastrophes in the shopping centre and the panic induced by Zommari's terrorist puppetry of Komamura's bankai, most people had run home to hide from the atmosphere of madness in the city. And Ukitake was thankful.

This slit in reality was tall, jagged, far more like the entrance of a Gillian than a small, humanoid Espada. As he'd suspected, long white fingers curled around the curtain of sky, tugging it this way and that. The piccolo-like nose edged out several metres above ground and he saw one shining red eye peep at the real world, and the toe of its huge pointed boot, before all these things were suddenly yanked back into the deep blue sky. There was a horrifying crunching sound, and worst was how short it lasted.

And finally the man of the moment, Yammy Riyalgo, bulled through the ragged portal with a shove of his shoulders and a ground-shaking thud of his oversized sandals. He was picking his teeth with a thin white shard of mask, and he left the garganta open, flapping in the wind.

"Tastes like crap. I'm sticking to adjuchas next time," grumbled the unmasked Hollow, casting about to get his bearings.

Well the description was accurate, if one noted the deep chocolate skin tone, the red comma tattoos like war paint on his face, the impressive sideburns, queue ponytail and open uniform since nothing quite fitted anymore. The heavy jawbone on top of a chin that could already crack boulders, and the wide central sternum hollow hole were dead giveaways.

To be perfectly honest, it was just the size that made the shinigami hesitate. And it made sense, didn't it, that someone who'd just eaten a Grand Menos should be twice the expected size? Or was it triple?

Juushiro shaded his green eyes and peered intently. Yes, those were definitely orange eyebrows. He had the right hollow.

"Oh wow, that really _is _Yammy!"

Ukitake looked for the voice in alarm, almost having a heart attack when he spotted Karin leaning casually against a lamppost where his senkai gate had just shut.

"_What_ are you – young lady, go back to your _room_!"

He experienced a sense of deflation as both the current and former Espadas ignored him in favour of bickering at each other. They still wore matching white uniforms.

"Damn, guy, you got fat."

"You got weak! But you always were, strutting about calling yourself Zero. The real word is _Cero_! I remember when you thought you were all that, trying to call us little shits!"

The Kurosaki racked her hazy memories, scratching at her short black hair. "Oh yeah... well it wasn't me but, 'Little shits that don't know who they're talking to should never dare open their mouths?' Is that what you mean?"

"Yeah, you bitch."

Her smile was tiny and condescending. "So why are you still talking?"

_**BOOM!**_ Yammy stamped on her, and the shockwave ploughed up the street. "WHY ARE YOU STILL STANDING?" he bellowed, as she wandered slowly away from his attack, swinging her legs mockingly with her hands behind her back.

"Because I'm a ghost, dumbass. Intangible. Ironically, all your reiatsu just goes straaaaight through me, and tell you a secret; I've been practicing walking through walls. Sometimes even Toushiro can't catch me." She was bright with mischief, but sadly her victory against Hitsugaya was mostly a sham. If he ever needed to, all he had to do was activate the red collar still locked around her neck. Thus far he'd preferred to give up and curse her retreating footsteps, thankfully.

"HAHAHAHA. ZERO TO ZERO." Yammy had lost the ability to lower his voice, and the laughter echoed for miles.

"Yes! Exactly! You _do_ have half a brain cell!"

His hand slammed the ground just in front of her and she skipped out of its path, electing to bravely hide behind and partially _inside_ the nearest brick wall. He'd left fingerprints in the tarmac. "Why are you so pissed off?" she berated him, in the way children do.

"I'M ALWAYS PISSED!"

"Maybe you should stop boozing then," she quipped, legging it milliseconds before the wall exploded.

"MAYBE YOU SHOULD LET ME EAT YOU, YOU LITTLE FAKE!"

He aimed another blow at her, faster than she could dodge, and Juushiro's blade rose to meet it. He coughed, disengaging once the girl was clear. She might be immune to spiritual pressure, but not spiritual _matter_. "I'm not so keen on close combat. I really prefer it when they shoot their little energy blasts."

"Really?" Karin peered around his cloak. "Hey, Hammy! You couldn't Bala your way out of one of Wonderwice's sandcastles! Nel eats your Cero for breakfast!"

"Thanks…" expressed the unlucky Thirteenth captain weakly, as the incensed Espada obliged them with several 'little' energy blasts. "All Waves, Rise Now and Become My Shield, Lightning, Strike Now and Become My Sword: Sougyo no Kotowari! _Law of Pisces!_"

Ukitake gritted his teeth and met the onslaught, channelling it through what were suddenly identical twin swords, thin and curved with long back-hooking prongs, and returning the favour. The brunt of the attack never hit him because he never tried to meet it head on. He deflected and rerouted it, sending a faster, stronger version back. The silver rectangles hanging on the rope between his hilts chimed and shone softly. He hoped the bellicose Kurosaki would back down and stay quiet, now.

The butterfly whispered in Karin's ear, and she called out, "Is being really, really annoyed that you're about to die your aspect of death?"

"YOU NEVER EVEN HAD AN ASPECT!" A succession of Bala streamed towards Juushiro, who was now tempted to shoo Karin away with her red choker himself.

She remained oblivious to his plight. "Uhh, well. Oblivion. Emptiness. Cessation of thought? Hey, perhaps it was brain death? That's very apt and symbolic, I think."

Just as her rival for the zero position lashed out, Karin found herself plucked out of danger and carried back home like a naughty toddler.

**o)0(o**

"What were you expecting to do, sprout wings and a god-mode power up?" asked her brother scathingly, flash-stepping back to the clinic and depositing her safely beside the Not-The-Last Ex-Quincy. "This isn't one of your videogames!"

"But I'm - against my best preferences - a ghost, Ichi -nii!" protested his little sister, tugging on his long tailored coat. "I'm so weak he can't even touch me! I'm immaterial! Insubstantial!"

"So were the Cult of Prometheus, but I don't see them being any use against_ a frigging Espada_!"

"What? I have a cult? Cool!"

"Not cool, Mitsubishi from over the road… Whose house I smashed," Ichigo recollected with some guilt, hiding Tensa Zangetsu behind his back.

"Oh," sighed Karin. "Lame."

"Why did you even come here?"

"I've become suddenly and inexplicably laissez-faire towards my survival. Being dead, I mean." She scowled and tried to squash the insect stalking her, and leading her astray with its invidious whispers. "Besides, you expect me to let Yammy within a mile of my sister and do _nothing?_"

"There's nothing you CAN do!" He could have sworn talking sense into Karin never used to be like banging his head against a brick wall. She was meant to be the smart one.

"Well I _used_ to be able to thrash him," she grumbled rebelliously. "Blame Toushiro if I can't anymore."

"Orihime!" called the ginger reaper, giving up and ignoring his innocent little sister's pleas for violence. Perhaps their dad was right, and imminent puberty was to blame. "You'll look after my sisters, right?"

"Ossu!" cheered Orihime, punching the air, and he was never quite sure how it kept happening, but he accidentally got swept along and mirrored her ridiculous pose. "By the way, everyone was worried about the attack by Zommari Leroux, so the whole gang came here to find out was going on. Keigo is hiding under your bed." Her eyebrows crinkled, and she pursed her lips. "Tatsuki-chan says good luck but said she's still not talking to you because Hichigo creeped her out last time."

Ichigo gave her a questioning look. "You know, you're weirdly calm."

She nibbled her fingernails nervously. "Yammy was the weakest. The rest are all defeated. How much could he have changed? I think… I know we'll be alright. You've changed more than anyone." That was perhaps the politest way she could have said his Hollow was scarier than all the others together.

"I never saw him train properly, just stuffing his face all day," offered Karin.

"Without getting fat?" interjected Yuzu, drawn down the stairs by twin magnetism. Despite his fears that she might be dragged into the war between the factions of the undead like her siblings before her, Isshin had taken pity on her vulnerable blindness and taught her just enough to be able to see her sister. And when to run away.

"Without getting fat," confirmed her sister with a scientific nod. "He is one hell of a lot taller though."

"Jealous," sighed Yuzu and Orihime in tandem, dreaming of all the unhealthy food they could consume.

"Kick his butt, Ichi-nii!" Karin took up a karate stance, shadow boxing. The hell butterfly fluttered around her head again, ever-present, and the girl's encouragement took a darker turn. **"Offer his gizzards upon a demonic altar, and bathe in the blood of victory; for he dared cross the bitchin' Tenebra Shirojos."**

"What?" said everyone else in the room, staring at her like an alien had just burst out of her chest.

"**Extract the discs from between every vertebrae of his spine, and make him do sit-ups for all eternity! Rip out his fingernails and cover him in itching powder!"** The twisted influence of the insect emissary from hell, and her childish imagination, were curdling disturbingly.

"Karin, I know you're a pessimist and you've been through a lot, but you seriously need some counselling." Ichigo's mouth was hanging open in shock and he was wincing from her suggested tortures. Was it really his sister they had snatched back from Aizen's clutches? Or more worryingly, was this really such a departure from her usual black humour?

She blinked, shaking off the unexplained fit of slightly adulterated evil. "I was first in the queue for the Anti-Isshin-Remembrance therapy sessions offered by the old beardy geezer. You should come, they're very liberating."

Her brother perked up, about to agree, when they were interrupted by the klaxon call of friendship.

"IIIiiichiGO!" cooed Keigo, careening towards his friend and idol on a collision course. Ichigo took the necessary precautions.

"IIIiiiIIIiiichiGOoo - ooo -oh...you're clearly not Ichigo... What name do you go by...Sir?" squeaked out Keigo, screeching to a halt with great difficulty.

The pale monster tilted its bladed skull inquisitively. Then without moving its jaws, did an uncanny imitation of the lowly Asano.

"Hiii-IIICHI-GO!"

Then, cackling, the eldritch creature left to beast on Yammy.

"Uh...uh..." whimpered Keigo, stunned by his apparent popularity.

"Hichigo's sense of humour has really improved!" chirped Orihime blithely.

**o)0(o**

Sasakibe Choujirou Tadaoki returned to the Soutaicho's side only to find him glaring thunderously at a fellow fukutaicho, his hands bunched around his spiral staff as if he wished to hit her with it. In turn, she was brandishing at him Tobiume's shikai and a wild expression.

"What situation is this?" asked Choujirou, sternly implying that they should both be ashamed of themselves. Neither settled. Yamamoto spoke first, cutting across the woman's gabbled explanation.

"Hinamori-fukutaicho is under a spell, whether literally or through infatuation I have not yet ascertained. Aizen is using her as a pawn. He tells her he's in trouble; that he needs help – his zanpakuto spirit is malicious and acting in his stead. He's the man she used to know, but the only one strong enough to save him from the machinations of his zanpakuto spirit is the Spirit King himself. And this love-struck little fool believes every word that slithers out of his snake mouth!"

Hinamori was caught out by the Soutaicho but incredibly not intimidated. "He was under the shackle of Osiris Feathers! If he'd lied he'd be dead already."

"One of the most notoriously difficult to master bakudo of all. Spare me your incessant prattling. He would have been able to hoodwink you easily."

"Flaws in the Twelfth Incantation reflect upon the caster, not the target," retorted Momo in a brittle, qualified tone. "I am unharmed."

"And most like you only dreamt you cast it. Sasakibe!" barked Yamamoto. "Fetch your...peers here to me."

"Eijisai-dono?" ventured the man politely, as if inquiring after the weather over a pleasant cup of milky tea. His affection for British culture was such that some had sworn he even wielded his zanpakuto with his little finger sticking out.

"All of them. Including the injured, the exiled, the demoted, and the bone idle."

"All together? That's rather a perilous combination, Eijisai-dono." He had a personal nickname for the commander, and nigh unique permission to use it to his face.

"That is my intention. If the Heads of the Five Noble Clans and their hereditary mastery of kido, zanjutsu, hohou and hakuda cannot sway Aizen, then what can?"

"I did make a vow never to use my bankai, sir. If you wish me to fight..." demurred his faithful lieutenant, trailing off. Momo watched avidly, one of Seireitei's aristocratic houses had always been shrouded in mystery to most commoners, and their exchange suggested that the elusive fifth family was in fact…the man closest to the Commander. With his groomed white hair, self-tailored clothes, and eyes like blank gold coins.

"Did you hear me suggest that some treacherous viper, who hides behind smoke and mirrors, and uses his lifelong enemies as living shields, and hopes to destroy the Spirit King himself... is worthy of _your bankai_, that you've honed preciously in secret for uncounted centuries? That he is deserving of the bankai that gave me _this scar_? !" Yamamoto pointed at the large hatch-mark scar on his deeply creased forehead, half of which could be claimed by Choujirou.

"Is he?" asked Sasakibe mildly, regarding his handiwork. "I was going to finish, if you wish me to fight at full strength, you need only say so. A word is small against centuries, but the right word would still be enough."

"I... am sincerely praying it won't be necessary." Genryuusai shook his head, beard swaying, and stepped away to regard a Tech Squad map on the desk detailing the current positions and statuses of all his officers. The old tag representing Aizen had recently been active.

"Soutaicho!" shouted Momo, the peach warrior. She would not quit until she conquered this mountain. "Are you going to ignore everything I've said?"

"Is your position so high that I must not? Are you not the one who is fraternising with our nemesis, and proven to be vulnerable to his suggestions?"

"I am not-!"

"He groomed you for years at his own admission!"

Resheathing her sword to show that her senses were not scattered, she stood up straighter. "Regardless of what I have learned and of who I am, I'm asking you whether our so-called leader is really so powerless to stop Aizen himself?" To stop the man who had asked her when she had begun to consider herself weak, and made her realise she wasn't.

Sasakibe intervened, assuming she meant Yamamoto. As the commander's right hand man he prided himself on filling in all the gaps the leader lacked, which often included diplomacy, sympathy and forgiveness. And explanations. And tact.

"Hinamori-fukutaicho, do you know why it is the strongest so often hold back? Why only one of the noble clan leaders is ever seen to use his bankai? Why the Soutaicho does not simply raze our foes to the ground? It's because it is important that the final power is never _necessary._ If the Commander has to go all-out now, how weak does that mean we are as a whole?"

"So you'll wait till it's too late? Are we here to pride ourselves on our strength, or to protect people? If we don't give Kyouka Suigetsu the Ouken, he has an alternative!"

The first and second among their society stiffened uncomfortably. They had not forgotten.

"The Spirit King is the only one who can overcome a perfect mirror; that much must be true... Face your weakness and admit that the power of Aizen-taicho, whether he is a malicious zanpakuto or not, is beyond all of our control! If he wants to be god then he must challenge god; if he is capable of challenging god then how can anyone lesser prevent him from reaching that duel?" She didn't sound like a lovesick fool anymore. She sounded like a portent.

Shigekuni was frowning deeply now, his wrinkled hands clenching on his staff in sudden doubt.

"Are you _stronger_ than this mythical king none of us has ever seen?" demanded Hinamori, resolute in her mutiny. "How many people will die to protect this stranger, that we don't know why we fight for him?"

"All these babes-in-arms have forgotten what they owe him. Is it not enough that we must keep a madman off the throne of the gods?" A shadow seemed to fall over the old man's face, and he lashed out at his lieutenant with a whipcrack command.

"Sasakibe! Fetch them now!"

**o)0(o**

Tiring of playing big cat and mouse with the ex-Tenebra Shirojos, now that she was out of sight and out of mind, Yammy recalled his mission, simplified as it was, and prepared for the task.

_**Eat**_.

"This is gonna taste awful."

Yammy pinched his wide nose to dampen the imminent lack of flavour, and drew in a deep breath that never ended.

He swelled bodily, slowly, almost imperceptible at the start. And soon little firefly glows began to flicker around him, as the semi souls of every little living thing for a mile around were sucked into his grimacing mouth.

"Peehhhhh!" spat the arrancar a minute or two later. "'S no use, I can't get used to the taste of piss. I'll just go straight for the main course."

"Well yes, you can use gonzui, but aren't there issues whereby anyone with the slightest spiritual ability can resist it? It's a very inefficient way to eat. I'm sure one captain is equal to any number of worthless people you could eat that way." Juushiro smiled harmlessly, giving the arrancar a little wave once he'd finally caught the brute's attention. Now he just had to keep it confined to himself; to protect the rank upon rank of defenceless Plus souls stacked all around them, a banquet laid out across miles.

Yammy curled his thick lips. "That trash was pretty specific. That Privaron bringing me the boss's messages 'cause Ulquiorra died like a slug choking on a rotten leaf. He called me shit for brains. 'Shit for brains' he says, 'make sure you eat all your vegetables. You've gotta gonzui every last one.' So I tell him, you are what you eat - how can I help being stupid, if the world is only full of retards for me to eat? Well he swore blind he weren't thick, so I ate him and you know what? I feel smarter already. So I reckon I can have my gonzui, and you can be pudding."

"That's astonishing logic. May I congratulate you on your IQ increase."

"Ha. Ha. Ha." Riyalgo's laugh was slow and flat footed and muddy, like an old mule pulling a heavy plough. "Hahaha. You really make me angry, old guy. You'd better taste good to make up for it."

"Your soul vacuum will need to do a little more than kill pigeons for that. By the way, didn't you know Ulquiorra is still alive?"

"You call that alive?" Yammy's spiteful grin was fearsome to behold. "But if his head's still smart, might be worth a bite. Shame he'll be so weak and tasteless. Should've done it a bit sooner, anh?"

"I was under the impression you were about six ranks lower than Schiffer. _Would_ you have been able to do it sooner?" When gauging an enemy's strength, Juushiro saw no harm in simply asking.

The hulk's eyes brightened maliciously. "You regret askin' that? Damn, you shouldn't get me mad, it'll jus' make your death messier. Of course I coulda eaten him any time, he was worse trash than all the trash he _called_ trash."

"Ah, well, thank you for clarifying; Decima-san" said the white-haired reaper politely, rotating his wrists so his swords drifted in lazy circles. He collocated all the information he'd learnt until now, and decided on his strategy.

"I'm gonna _decimate_ all the idiots that think I'm the _Decima_," sniggered the demon.

"The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak," Juushiro lamented to himself; "I will have to risk my health failing again so soon." He looked up at the Espada, mild and guileless, and asked:

"Is it true that Neliel can eat your Gran Rey Ceros for breakfast?"

"_Why don't you try it? !"_ snarled Riyalgo, slamming his fists together gorilla fashion and roaring a storm of viscous red reiatsu at the shinigami, an oni breathing fire.

"Personally, I would still be hungry if that was my morning repast." Ukitake jingled the silver tags on the red silk rope that linked his twin swords. One had turned cherry-red with heat, and the arrancar's attack had vanished without trace. "Do you offer continental breakfasts?"

A graceless right hook threatened to flatten him, but the thousand-year-old man darted quickly under the swing and snagged the hooks of his slender katanas into the soldier's sleeves, sweeping them both round in a circular walk that deflected Yammy's blows of all their power. Each of his wild punches was spun away in this gentle manner, and only the Balas and Ceros were faced head-on, just to dissipate into the ether.

He fumed, lungs heaving with frustration, as he was toyed with like a spinning top. Every breath he sucked in glittered with stolen souls and every breath out was laced with black smoke. Bigger than before, towering over the despicable little reaper, he knelt down and shoved his craggy face into his opponent's.

"Know what this number 1 is for?" he challenged, pointing to the bold **10** tattoo visible through his ripped white jacket and splitting seams.

The Thirteenth taicho averted his nose from the stench of burning on the beast's breath, hiding a pallid cough behind his sleeve. "I imagine it's the first half of the symbol for 'ten'."

The pitiless eyes narrowed. "Everyone's mistake. What it means's I can only use my Resurrecciòn _once_. And after that," the voice crashed ominously; "there's no going back for _anyone_."

He scraped a blunt fingernail down the black strip, peeling his own skin off without a tremor of pain, and flicked the bloody scrap at Ukitake's apprehensive expression with a smirk. It stuck to the human's cheek, falling off as the man grimaced in disgust.

"Listen closely to my real name," rumbled the Cero Espada, arrogant and overconfident regardless of the shinigami's previous mockery of his strength. He drew a zanpakuto from his belt with glowing anticipation, and with one wrench of his brawny arms snapped it in half.

"_**Be Enraged;"**_

The world exploded.

"_**IRA!"**_

**o)0(o**

_**Shinigami Cup: Golden!**_

**o)0(o**

Karin: S'okay guys, I'm the real Espada Zero round here. I'll defeat this punk with my hands tied behind my back.  
Yammy: HELL NO YOU WON'T! *doubles in size*  
Karin: Hey Yammy, yo' Momma so _fat_ Mount Everest tried to climb her!  
Yammy: How dare you, bitch! *triples in size again* MY MOTHER WAS A LOVELY PERSON! *quadruples* …Until I ate her.  
Karin: You're almost flawless, Yammy. The only one is – you exist.  
Yammy: You'll wish I didn't exist when I _kill_ you! *quintuples*  
Karin: Well if I'm the Zero, you're the Minus Zero; lucky for us you're imaginary ne?  
Yammy: I'M THE CERO, DAMN IT! *grows so big, he hits his head on a satellite*  
Karin: By the way, you know your pet puppy Kukkapuuro?  
Yammy: *suspicious* What about him?  
Karin: Last time I was in Las Noches? I kicked him.  
Yammy: _**RAAARRGH! **_***POPS***  
Karin: Well, that's the Winter War finished. *dusts hands off* Ichi-nii, wanna play football?  
Hichigo: _You stay the hell away from me! Damn, girl, you scary!_

**o)0(o**

_Chapter Notes:_

_This week was the 3 year anniversary of starting Hell Butterfly. I find that heartbreaking. Y U No Finished Yet?_

_Momotarou was a demon-fighting boy born from a peach. That was pretty well explained in-story. Split Peach as a title represents Momo being torn between two sides, of course, but is also the name of a famous geisha hairstyle (momoware). Osiris Feathers refers to Egyptian mythology, where Osiris judges the hearts of the dead by weighing them against the feather of Ma'at, goddess of truth, law and justice. People on the nice list get an afterlife; people on the naughty list get thrown to the Devourers._

_Next chapter is the last of Arc 3, and then we're on the home straight!_


	46. SkyFall

**Hell Butterfly**

**SkyFall**

**~46~**

**o)0(o**

There was something hideous there, wreathed in the suffocating dust of crumpled buildings and shattered streets. A shapeless mass crammed into the thin gap between high-rises and multi-storey shopping malls, kicking against the constraining boundaries and bringing every home crashing down. A whorl of souls spiralled through the turmoil to its centre, stars falling into a black hole.

Yammy Riyalgo never paused whilst consuming all the souls in Karakura - he never needed to breathe out, biology broken. Only breathing in and growing all the time, except when he spoke to boast. And now, mimicking the light of an imminent eruption in the mouth of a volcano; his heavy jaws cracked open and a hellfire Gran Rey Cero blazed out.

Sougyo no Kotowari drank it up, had absorbed dozens of his prior attacks – but they'd been raindrops compared to this flood. Skin sizzled as all the silver charms and even the blades themselves turned white-hot, the silk umbilical cord linking them bursting into flame.

Juushiro flung his zanpakutos away before they could melt permanently into his hands, coughing hoarsely as he stared in disbelief at the carnage all around.

That _thing_ was a mountain brought to life, a living peak climbing up out of the earth to grasp for the sun. There was no time to recover, no chance to think, too late for the death god to do anything but reflex.

"Bankai!" he shouted towards the twin blades melting identically on the ground, harnessing the power he'd borrowed from Yammy's attacks, to save his frail body some of the strain. He skipped over the longwinded release commands for his zanpakuto spirit's final form, summoning the Flow of Pisces, _Sougyo no Michishio, _with its nickname – a level of familiarity with his bankai that no other shinigami had achieved.

"_Fishbowl!"_

The ruined swords crumbled to ash, and above his outstretched hands two shimmering fish appeared, circling over each burned palm. One was indigo blue, one burnished copper, both trailing red fins and silver rings in their tails.

Waves rose from the dry ground, water dancing up in thin sheets to shield him and the city around from Aizen's secret weapon; shoals of sparking koi leapt in and out of the currents with electricity trailing in their wake, his swords. Rivers twined underfoot, pushing the target off balance.

Words fell from the monstrosity like boulders tossed over a cliff, and a colossal fist breached the encircling ocean. Juushiro moved his hands fluidly, a tai chi master, and the twin carps flowed around him, guiding his waves and lightning to once again disorient and disarm the Espada. His blows were rerouted, his deadly roars absorbed and recycled by the sea.

The words tumbled down again, and Yammy's ugly ridged head reared over the edge of the affectionately-named 'Fishbowl'.

"_**Continental breakfast?" **_jeered the gargantuan arrancar. _**"That's when I devour a continent!"**_

**o)0(o**

"Is this yours? Funny, I never thought I'd see it." Ichigo had appeared near Ukitake, almost unnoticed, so fierce was the captain's concentration. "So it's a… a…"

"Fishbowl. I was preparing to use it before he transformed," admitted Juushiro. "Such an uncaring and stupid creature must have had good reason to take offence at Karin's Zero rank. He wants to eat one of our prisoners of war. Although we thought he was Ulquiorra's pet dog; it seems Ulquiorra was his muzzle all along."

The teenager dragged his left hand across his face, creating a merciless red mask. His hair began to grow, skin turning pale white beneath the bankai cloak. His Resurrecciòn in answer to Yammy's. _"What do you want me to do?"_ creeled an alien voice.

"Attack," urged the shinigami, continuing to flow and spin through his stances, Sougyo darting around him elegant and mesmerising. "Attack from the top and give it everything you've got, because it's as much as I can do to defend. And be careful not to be tossed into the water, since it'll distort your aim, and is electrically charged."

"_S'the Tenth really that strong?"_ jibed the half-Hollow, spinning his zanpakuto by its chain in eagerness.

"The _Cero_, the _strongest_, and no!" snapped Juushiro. "I'm just that sick! If my body wasn't half killing itself, every Cero that hit the waves would become a thunderbolt to strike him down! Now if you call yourself one of us, _follow my orders!_"

Kurosaki Ichigo obediently soared up to the rim of the crackling whirlpool, and peered inside, and gagged. He didn't even know what to _call_ that thing. Except a tank. A brown patchwork of Hollow, demon, godzilla, ankylosausus, centipede and tank. With a ponytail.

There were just too many _legs_, and bolts, armour plates, bulging muscles and more bare chest than anyone should have to see in a lifetime. Was he…a were-armadillo-spider? It didn't even equate to a class of Menos, more it was all of them stuck together.

He'd expected to see Yammy, the bulky man whose arm he'd sliced off at their first meeting, marooned in the bottom of the fishbowl. Not a leviathan using it as a paddling pool.

As Juushiro had described, the walls of the trap moved constantly, messing with his vision, reaching out to snatch at Riyalgo's numerous legs and keep him constantly staggering off kilter. And every blast fired into the water sizzled out into a sparking fish, racing through the slender sea in a shoal of seed lightning, stealing and reusing the Espada's ire. But they should have been sharks and killer whales, not these lethargic little pike at best, and watching them flop ineffectually out of the maelstrom to electrocute the arrancar gave Ichigo a good idea of how wretched Ukitake was really feeling.

_And he still doesn't let a single Bala get past,_ thought the would-be guardian. There was still a world of difference between him and a real captain, no matter how huge his reiatsu grew.

Spinning Tensa Zangetsu on its chain and gathering all his power into a stripe along its cutting edge, Ichigo unleashed a Getsuga Tenshou tornado upon the Cero Espada in greeting.

The beast's head dipped slightly under the pressure, a gash opening on his bolted neck, and then looked up with a brutal grin. His reattached left arm, now the size of two freight lorries joined at the elbow, flexed in memory.

"**Hey, Kurosaki,"** smirked the mammoth. **"My fist is pleased to see you."** He punched upwards and the sky filled with a red sunset at midday.

"**Your family lives near here, right?"** The voice was so huge and deep it was barely understandable, an avalanche of sound. "**Have I swallowed them yet? Or'd you do that already?**"

And Ichigo saw red for a different reason, plunging into the danger zone in a plume of black fire.

Yammy opened his jaws and tried to snap the raven out of the air, getting only a mouthful of Getsuga Tenshou for his troubles. Ichigo darted and whirred and ricocheted within the bowl, dodging jabs and kicks and hyperbeams, dealing out blow after blow until the cup made of water filled with a dark broth of his acidic reiatsu.

"**Now DON'T,"** growled the indescribable monster, his Hierro skin smouldering; **"Fucking get on my NERVES, because I WANT YOU TO DIE **_**SLOW**_**."**

It was a simple matter of inhaling differently, for him to drink down the spicy tarry soup of Ichigo's attacks, and the fizzing little fish followed, the walls of ocean beginning to wobble and recede like a clay dish on a potter's wheel collapsing; and then the legions of souls massed just beyond began to surge towards him, iron filings drawn irresistibly to his gluttonous magnet.

And naturally, the bigger he got – the higher up the food chain he could dine.

"**Finally,"** exulted the Hollow; **"It's starting to taste Good!"**

Ichigo's turbulent powers rose and fell beyond all control or sense, at their highest rocking Yammy to his many knees; at their lowest succumbing to the painful tug of Riyalgo's gonzui, and amidst this confusion it took him too long to realise that the entire bankai was draining away.

The fishbowl had evaporated.

Juushiro had fallen.

**o)0(o**

Karin was watching the fight from her bedroom window with their father's binoculars. Yuzu was stitching tiny new outfits for Orihime's fairy court, to calm her tripping heart. She didn't understand how everyone else in the war stayed so composed.

"Look at him go! _A cauldron of tormented souls, boiling in despair!_ Um, ignore that." Yuzu hadn't condoned Karin's occasional spouts of cruelty, and was currently withholding pudding until her twin mended her ways.

"But Nee-chan, the angrier he gets, the bigger he gets, even when he's not eating people!" That had been clear to her just in two minutes of listening to the bellowing roars get madder, then louder, then even madder, and then _even louder._She applied scissors aggressively to some pink satin.

Karin nearly fell out the window at the revelation, her twin grabbing for her sash to prevent her redeath.

"Is the Hougyoku made of _steroids?_ We're all doomed. Yuzu, if I die…again, you were my favourite sibling."

"We're going to die?" whispered her sister, petrified, and unable to take such jokes lightly now that every other member of her family was technically deceased.

"Pft. They're a bunch of megaboss super-captains. We'll be fine." The former Espada Zero flapped her hands dismissively.

Ichigo appeared on the path outside with a semi-conscious captain in tow.

"I think."

**o)0(o**

Ichigo had flash-stepped to the ailing ghost's rescue - "Why are you hugging a pair of fish?" – and whisked Ukitake away from the battlefield. He wasn't stable enough to restrain the arrancar alone, and was praying his father had recovered or any other shinigami had rendezvoused at the Kurosaki abode. Hell, he would greet Shinji and his gang with open arms.

"'Nother one for the clinic, Inoue!" hollered Ichigo, and her golden pyramid admitted him.

"What's this? 'I know you're dying in your afterlife, but don't worry, my dad runs a clinic!'?" jested Ukitake feebly, dangling over the ryoka's shoulder. It wasn't the first time this had happened to him. He'd sent an alert for reinforcements back to Seireitei, but had no confirmation on when or if they would arrive. Every other captain had already had dealt with their own invasions.

"My undead GP former-medic-squad dad runs a clinic, with my time-reversing girlfriend currently in it," snorted the teenager, lugging the death god inside.

"…Point taken."

As Ichigo stretched the patient out on one of the clinic's gurney beds, and wheeled him into the living room to be treated by Inoue, the man aired his observations on their opponent.

"There's nothing in him but fury, not even the reasons behind his rage are left, not a whit of morality. This is a soul with nothing left to save, even if we could sublimate him. I shudder to ask a child to fight wars I cannot win, but…"

"I'm not a child," Ichigo corrected him. "You gave me the Shinigami Substitute badge yourself." He dug the block out of his pocket and waved it like a license to kill. Double-O-15.

"For my sins," apologised the captain, rolling onto his back and closing his eyes in exhaustion.

A small hand tapped his shoulder.

"Would you like a bowl of water for your pet fish?" asked Yuzu, and some of Juushiro's faith in humanity was restored by her sweetness.

"Ew, look at Yammyzilla's ponytail," complained Karin from behind binoculars, her view much improved since the Sougyo no Michishio had drained away. "I hate men with ponytails."

"I used to have a ponytail," Ukitake whimpered at her. Faith in humanity depleted again.

**o)0(o**

His first blows shuddered down the Cero Espada's extruding spine , his second made the Godzilla roar loud enough to burst the ozone layer, his third barely distracted it, and his fourth was swatted away like a mosquito despite being as big as the first three combined. And all his best efforts couldn't distract the voracious arrancar from its feast of human souls.

"**Either your reiatsu's fallen to a whisper, or I can't hear it over the sound of how almighty I am,"** mocked Yammy. ** "Your aura changes faster than mine! Ulquiorra said you were unstable, so what's it gonna be? You gonna blow up like Perro Rabioso did, or join us in Las Noches? I'm sayin', strawberry, how ripe shall I let you get before I eat you? Don't wanna miss my chance again like with the Quatro!"**

"I am not a strawberry!" yelled Ichigo, despite all unfortunate names to the contrary. "I'm a Vaizard! And I should be able to kill you," he panted under his breath. Leroux had cremated just from standing too close. Yammy was seven ranks up. "What's wrong with me _now_? Are you really growing that fast? Hell, you should be back in Hueco Mundo where you wouldn't _step on people!"_

"**Puny Death God,"** laughed the ultimate Hulk, picking up the tiny buzzing fly in stumpy fingers, taking special care to use the left arm Ichigo had once severed; and pounding the black ant into the concrete again and again and again and again. The hollow horns stabbed into his hand, the tiny black sword dug under his skin like a splinter: Yammy did not notice. ** "You couldn't kill your sister: you don't even register compared to me!"**

**o)0(o**

After being smushed by Yammy, Ichigo staggered back home to deliver a dire warning. "Come here," he croaked, crooking a taloned finger at Ishida. They faced each other on either side of the thin pane of safety.

"If that barrier breaks…" said Ichigo very clearly and carefully, his mask tilted up rather than shattering as in the past, and his eyes piercing red glows; "you will stuff any bastard that approaches my family full of so many arrows and Seele Schneiders that they look like your Handicrafts Club's favourite _pincushion_, and I don't give _a fucking damn if the universe splits in half. Queenie!"_ screeched Hichigo, turning away from the white-faced Quincy.

"Y-yes sir! ?" yelped the girl, saluting.

"You hanging in there?" he asked, smiling.

"Fine," sweated Orihime, the smile was well-meant, but a little creepy. Though she supposed it was good if Ichigo's face just kept getting funnier, as that boded well for an amusing future.

The eyes narrowed. "_Are you lying to me?"_

She blinked, worried he might threaten to tear her tongue out again. "Are _you_?"

He swayed, one of his bull horns broken, his feet unsteady, Zangetsu chipped in his palm. "What?" His mouth fumbled the word, vision blurring. "I've got to stop him."

"Stay here," blurted out his soul mate. "No, just for a minute, I'll fix you as many times as it takes, but don't go back like _that_!"

Ichigo hesitated, looking between her brittle little haven and the rampaging dinosaur, torn between a loyal faith in her and the habit of knowing her shield wouldn't hold unless he was out there protecting her from the worst of the blows. Moving backwards from the battle went against every instinct he and his Hollow and his zanpakuto had.

"I wouldn't flinch!" shouted Tatsuki, berating him for not running away, which he found confusing coming from her. "If Orihime-chan is protecting me, I don't need to even blink!"

Yammy's gargantuan palm aptly tested her boast - slammed down on the building and the shield, quaking the earth and smashing three buildings on either side down to their foundations. **"Get back here, trash!"**

Tatsuki fell to the floor in a heap, they all did. Except Chad, standing silent and calm by Orihime's side, who really hadn't blinked. Ichigo was sprawled on the floor, scooped into the ShunShun Rikka's embrace whether he liked it or not, glaring up at the attacker.

Meanwhile Mizuiro sauntered into the kitchen to start shaking up dangerous cocktails of common household cleaning products. He wasn't keen on becoming a smear on Yammy's knuckles, he hadn't had enough girlfriends yet to die quietly.

"Godzirrraaa aaa!" wailed Keigo hysterically. He was clinging to his friend's legs in despair. "SAVE ME, ROBOHIMEEE!"

Orihime's eyes flashed eerily. "Battle cyborg Robohime 3000 would triangulate the enemy's position and airstrike his head! She counteracts all incoming salvos with laser beams!" Her face fell, pouting. "It's a shame it's not the year 3000 yet. I would win."

"Even so, ganbatte, ganbatte," Tatsuki comforted her, patting her on the shoulder with a grin. "The best defence is a good offence."

Inoue fell silent for a moment, then mused, "I know someone who's _very_ offensive."

The miniature ninja flicked his scarf pompously. "I'll take that as a compliment, 'Queenie'. It's you who's pathetic -"

"_And_ if _you're_ just another part of _me_, aren't you equally responsible for my strengths and weakness?" Orihime parried the fairy's scorn like a lawyer, her index finger raised in _Objection!_

The ninja spluttered, turning pink behind his bandanna, mortified that she'd finally caught him out. 'I-I just don't like sitting around like a freaking...daisy!'

"I know my reiatsu will never be high enough for you to fight like you want. But I need to protect Sado-kun and Tatsuki-chan and Mizuiro-kun and Yuzu-chan and Karin-chan and Ichigo-kun...and Isshin-san...and Ishida-kun...and Ukitake-san..." She was forgetting someone, for sure, but she just couldn't twig who. She tugged her leg away from whatever invisible gnome had caught it.

"Whenever I'm fighting a fatty I use their size against them," reminisced Tatsuki, resident karate champion. "The bigger they are the harder they fall. It's all about the counter flow... and nerve pinches when the judges aren't looking."

The Shun Shun Rikka listened to this with almost sinister degrees of interest. Orihime didn't have sufficient reiatsu, never would, but there again their collective hobby was spitting in the eye of physics. They whispered in a huddle, glancing at her in secrecy.

A Cero rained down on her shield, and she threw her hands over her head, feeling as her heart leapt excitedly in tune with Tsubaki's instead of withering in fear like the rest of her, and the cheers of Baigon, Hinagiku and Lily as they rejected and reflected the blow, scarlet strobe lights revolving around them and streaming back towards Yammy.

"What was that? !" shrieked Keigo, diving under the table.

Tsubaki, Lily, Hinagiku and Baigon conferred briefly before shouting back in unison:

"_Shiten Zanshen!"_

A colossal yell followed, popping their eardrums, and beat of silence, and then an even more terrible roar as the Cero Espada swelled yet again from his fury.

Tsubaki threw back his tiny head and crowed with laughter.

"Great," approved Tatsuki; "what's next? Do we have a Karate-hime, or a Sumohime?"

"No no no, the sumo wrestler trashed my flat; so they're Ninjahime's sworn enemies."

"_Hurry up,"_ snapped Hichigo, studying the latest piece to fall off his mask; and fuming at his lack of self-control. He'd thought Ichigo's acceptance would stabilise him, but it turned out that the Hollow had always had the better grasp on their powers, while the shinigami just bulldozed through life on willpower alone. His long fingers twitched around the fragment, burning it to charcoal in a tiny blue-black Bala. _"Heal me. The bastard's not gonna get any weaker whilst you chat."_

Orihime was only half-listening. Her grey eyes were measuring the arrancar now, mouth in a thin grim line none of them had seen before. Clearly the success of Shiten Zanshen and visions of Robohime et al had raised her ambitions. An amber oval enveloped Ichigo, as requested, but a golden aura was starting to evaporate from her skin, coiling around the pins in her auburn hair.

"I've been doing this wrong the whole time," she decided slowly. "I should put the shield around _Yammy_. Then he can't eat, he can't stomp, and he can't blow people up."

"Wait!" cried Uryuu, and Ichigo slammed against Souten Kisshun as he leapt to stop her.

"Orihime, we'll die if you do that!" panicked Tatsuki.

"So is everyone else out there," said the strange girl in a far-off voice, glaring at the gonzui guzzling up all the people she'd ever walked past or bought a bun from or never met; "and I can always fix that after."

"Please stop talking like that," whimpered Keigo pitifully; "you're terrifying me."

The resin protecting them shattered and a quartet of brightly coloured paper aeroplanes swooped up to the Espada's distant head. A huge pyramid drew itself into existence, bizarre sounds like wind chimes and soft cymbals echoing as a hundred souls hit the glass and rebounded.

Yammy lifted his hands, trying to tug the cage off his head, and snarled horrifically as his fingers failed to pierce it.

"It holds down here, so it'll hold up there," said Inoue with a taut, not smile, but intensity. "Sado-kun said, people who hide fall behind, and I need to keep up. It's not enough to save a dozen people, and watch a hundred thousand die. Is it?" she asked Ichigo fiercely, the one who had proclaimed he would protect a mountain of people.

"Needs to be bigger," was all Ichigo said in the soft crawl his voice became when he was teetering between his two sides, wondering which could strike faster. He watched Yammy like a cat, and when an enormous elephant foot hovered over the house, crashed straight through the window in his rush to block its descent.

"A hundred thousand?" asked Mizuiro, quavering, as he peered out of the kitchen towards their imminent doom, a strong smell of bleach and oven cleaner and white spirits wafting over from his homebrew incendiaries.

Inoue nodded, looking around the room for the first time, even Chad had gone pale and sat down heavily at her rash actions. "That's how many souls Aizen needs, isn't it?"

Outside, Hichigo had repulsed the foot's descent with an inky blue Cero, and had moved on to carving the leg off with repeated, concentrated Getsugas to dissuade future attempts to flatten his house. Apparently Ichigo had recalled his earlier strategy against very tall Gillians, to start at the toes and slice his way up.

Incensed, and in pain, Yammy thrashed from side to side, steamrolling the streets and tangling himself in electric cables like a smaller man stumbling through cobwebs. He discharged a Gran Rey Cero that imploded in his face, and the cage cracked and smashed into a million smithereens, gold dust. The arrancar howled, his whole face bleeding.

"Lily!" shrieked Inoue, as pain lanced through her chest. They couldn't defend as wholly against attacks from within. "Baigon! Hinagiku! Come back!"

"Tsubaki's gone! Ayame, bring him back!" gasped the pink-haired fairy, careering back into the clinic, her yellow goggles broken and one of her wings torn off. "Hurry, Shun'ou! We'll hold the Santen Kesshun, but we can't push that guy back without him. That _poser_, why must he be so _fragile!_"

"Why has no one else come?" tremored Orihime. "Where are all the other captains? Where's Hachigen? He could do this, I'm sure."

"They're nearly all looking worse than Captain Koi Carp over here," explained Karin morbidly.

Yuzu finally dared squeak out her opinion, as the older people ran around in panic, and the Not-So-Ex-Quincy calmly aimed his bow out of the broken window. "E-e-even when you stop him…from…eating everyone," shivered the little girl, way out of her depth in the eye of the storm; "it's his anger that makes him bigger, not what he eats. He'll still get stronger, even if you stop him reaching anything. R-right, Karin-chan? You thought I was right?"

Karin seemed to have finally reached her snapping point, her hand reaching behind her waist for the sword she'd never wanted and was no longer there. Screaming in frustration, more like her fellow Zero than anyone would dare admit, she punched the wall and tore at the red choker round her throat in a tantrum. "YES! Yes, you're right, he'll just get bigger faster because we're getting in his way and making him _madder!_ _ I could have killed him!"_

Yuzu edged away from her twin in fear. "Karin-chan?"

The black-haired Kurosaki whirled round to Inoue, accusing her. "You _know_ I could have beaten him!" she challenged. "You saw me!"

"It wasn't you, Karin-chan," denied Orihime, also alarmed by the outburst.

"But if it _had been_, then this wouldn't be happening now, would it?" hissed the wild child, her hand snapping out and finally snaring the skeletal hell butterfly that had been filling her head with dark possibilities. "_You_ could kill him, couldn't you, and you're no bigger than my _fist_," she insisted, shoulders shaking with repressed…_something._

"_Why did you come, if you're not going to tell me your name again?"_ she asked it, so softly and dangerously that no one else heard. And then she let the crushed moth fall to the carpet, and stormed back up to her room to watch the rest of the war in private, where no one could witness her dying of aggravation.

Especially Yuzu, who would never make her pudding ever again after that little display.

**o)0(o**

In the sky, Urahara Kisuke had crawled out of the woodwork and finally succeeded in forcing Riyalgo's stunted attention span to stick to him long enough to stop the hollering and stamping and spitting red death in all directions. It had required several kido, and stabbing him in the soft, vulnerable eye. And then the real difficulty began.

_Making Yammy think._

"Oh, yes yes, Yammy _Smash_, good for you. Do you understand what you're doing, you sorry excuse for a spinosaurus?" He was standing on the giant's ridged eyebrow, kicking it gently with his wooden sandals, his green jacket flapping in a gale whenever the smoke-spewing mouth spoke.

"_**RAMPAGING**_**!"**

"So desu ne! Good! Very well done, Yammy-kun! And do you know why?"

"…**WHY NOT?"** retaliated the Hollow, his piggish eyes trying to comprehend how the shinigami could even _question_ his actions.

"Your vaunted leader wants you to swallow one hundred thousand and more souls, so he can turn you into the Ouken. Didn't he tell you? You're the base and catalyst for his jailbreak into heaven." He waved Benihime around expressively.

Yammy Riyalgo considered this, the greater mass of his brain not having contributed to its efficiency, and failed to see the consequences. **"SO?"**

Kisuke resorted to simple words and large, patronising gesticulations to act out the premise. "When you've _eaten_, just as much as your ickle _belly_ can handle, Aizen will _kill_ you, K-I-L-L, and turn you into a lump of _metal_, that he can use to go and _annoy _the gods. I can't make this much plainer without resorting to Rukia-chan's sketchpad."

The Cero Espada's great brow furrowed, and he stamped his many feet, roads became craters. Fists the size of houses opened and closed, bending electricity pylons like grass. **"…THAT JUST PISSES ME OFF."** He punched the ground, turning a car park into a collection of aluminium pancakes, and scraped up the lost souls of the car occupants into his bleeding mouth.

"Please stop that," sighed Urahara fussily, dismembering said hand with a single crimson shriek of Benihime. And he severely hoped that would be the only blow needed, since he'd been focusing the reiatsu for that strike for a good ten minutes, ever since catching wind of the Espada's arrival. "Remember, the more you comfort eat, the sooner Aizen recasts you into the King's Key."

Riyalgo growled and the remaining lampposts rattled like castanets. He didn't seem overly fazed by the injury, in the same way a mountain was uncaring of a tree felled on its summit. But the stump was messy, and more useless than fingers that could grab and twist and pull tower blocks from their foundations, and that was more convincing than the pain.

"**YOU AIN'T EVEN IN BANKAI. WHAT A PISS-TAKE!"**

"_My_ bankai? Heaven forbid. Benihime doesn't care about me, my genius, my hat… de nada. If I let her out to play the first one to perish would be me_._"

"**HA, YEAH, I'LL KILL AIZEN, I PLANNED TO ANYWAY;"** swore the abomination; **"THEN YOU'LL BE NEXT, AND ALL YOUR POWER THAT CAN DO THIS," **he waved the amputation in a gout of fast-congealing blood; **"WILL BE MINE!"**

"And you'll grind my bones to make your bread, I see. I hope to science I raise your intelligence, I couldn't bear to leave this life via the digestive tract of an idiot. Aizen is over there, he arrived a while ago whilst you were...rampaging, or interpretive dancing, or whatever Hollows like to call it. Please continue as you were – but aim it at _him."_

Urahara smiled as the simple-minded brute obliged him, now on a par for size with Atlas who held up the sky; but suddenly the Kurosaki boy was flitting around its head, countermanding his genius orders.

"Yammy. Hey! Thickhead. Fatty. OI! YAMMY!"

The Titan glared at him, teeth the size of tombstones bared.

"I'm not on your side, but it's pretty pathetic to watch you flailing at thin air," said the rival vaizard to the arrancar cockily. Injuries and wariness pounded into him by the Zero Espada had been spirited away by Inoue's fairies.

"Oh! Well I guess hitting the right target can't hurt," allowed Kisuke, forgiving his rash little trainee. "Though all I intended was for him to punch the sky instead of the city."

**o)0(o**

Aizen and Tousen had taken up residence on one of the tallest buildings in Karakura town centre, selecting a luxury hotel with elegant, comfortable chairs in its beautifully groomed roof garden. There even seemed to be a heated outdoor pool beyond the wrought-iron gate, and Aizen was currently perusing the whiskeys and cognacs on offer at the bar. They had the place to themselves, naturally. All the humans were hiding.

"The real world has much more choice, doesn't it?" noted the villain, hand wavering between a twenty year old malt and a thirty. "The Soutaicho does so frown upon enterprise in Rukongai."

Tousen was already seated with a gin and tonic, in memory of the deceased member of their treacherous triumvirate. The lush trappings and decorations of their impromptu headquarters had little effect on the blind man, though the chair was indeed cosy. Wonderwice was currently playing behind the bar, creating colourful cocktails with alcohol content fit to kill a grown man.

"Soul Society is limbo, not life. By rebuilding what they lost when they died, they would only rebuild the same pollution and corruption that chokes the real world. And Rukongai citizens no longer have the physical need for sustenance to excuse themselves."

"Dead people are so much purer in your eyes. I guess that is why both the living and the heartless are banned from heaven." Sousuke did not allow Kaname's ever-serious tones to dampen his enjoyment of the moment, watching the tiny reflection of Yammy trample a miniature Karakura on the side of his fluted wineglass. "The only difference between them is what they choose to eat."

A paper senkai door slid open just past the edge of the roof, and Hinamori stepped out, gazing at them with large, apprehensive eyes.

"Aizen-taicho," she half-stated, half-questioned, unsettled by his plush surroundings and utter disregard towards the war of his own design.

The ruler of Hueco Mundo raised his glass to her sardonically, taking a sip with every sign of enjoyment. And she thought, _This is not the behaviour of a man who has lived for more than two hundred years and tired of it. This is a man taking his first taste of a world he has until now only been able to watch._

"The Split Peach." He greeted her with sly humour, now that she could observe him closely. He had begun to deviate even from the aloof and condescending persona he'd cultivated when acting out Aizen-the-Traitor. He spoke too freely. "Did you betray your comrades for me? Is Yamamoto Shigekuni convinced or at least blackmailed to give me his precious key? I'm holding Karakura to ransom, after all."

She lifted her chin slightly, unsure if it was a shake or a nod. She had no idea what the Soutaicho had made of her circular argument, that a clash with god was inevitable. That two mirrors reflect infinity.

Aizen was now eating snacks left in a dainty bowl on the table by its previous occupants. The faint smile hovered permanently on his lips, eyes sparkling behind the wayward strand of his brown hair. The dissonance seemed to be that, whilst 'Sousuke' had already predicted the entire scenario and all its alternatives, planned and instigated most of it; Kyouka Suigetsu was still _fascinated_,almost immature_._ He was luxuriating in his new environment.

"Why did you come to me?" she begged, feigning shock. How much did the zanpakuto know of what its avatar had said?

"As a diversion. Not for you, of course, for me. It lacks stimulation to wait whilst my pawns fight. Behold, Karakura falls, and all I contributed was the word '_Eat'_."

Perhaps it was true. She struggled with which emotion to feel first, her mind whirling in a tempest. The fragile image of a future at his side began to shatter.

"But I hold no grudge or, honestly, any particular opinion towards you, my lieutenant. I let you save nearly a whole city. Won't that look good on your resume?"

Momo rallied. "I've seen through your facade!" She was clutching something in her hands, a scrap of ribbon, and he laughed, genuinely tickled by her little war cry. Breaking the girl was endlessly amusing.

Yamamoto breached the senkai gate, striding in silence until he stood opposite his worst enemy, and banged his staff against the hotel's roof like a hammer of judgement. "_Scum_," he stated, a quiet ultimatum. "Have you tired of hiding behind Hollows; or run out of Hollows to hide behind?"

"I hope you've come to clean up the mess that arrancar is making," chuckled Kyouka Suigetsu, pointing around his wineglass. "The only two of your elite captains still standing are Tousen and I." A taunt made all the more delicious when one remembered that Aizen had been the first to fall. "Yammy was the worst match for poor Juushiro. Most people are, when one has tuberculosis."

"Ignore him! It's not the real Aizen Sousuke!" Momo cried, and his face fell abruptly. In the same second, Yammy's fist punched straight through the man, bursting his projection with a knuckle sandwich of pure rage. The ceiling caved in, the expensive bottles all exploded in a shrapnel bomb of glass, and the heated pool sloshed into the penthouse apartment below.

"Bahhhh!" scolded Margera, smacking his cousin's giant fist ineffectually. His game had been disrupted. "Crash!"

"_**WHERE IS HE! !"**_ roared the dinosaur, flicking Wonderwice away like a mote of dust.

"Behind you," sighed Ichigo, pointing with Zangetsu, floating above Yammy's shoulder like an evil conscience. "I already told you that."

Everyone stared in the direction indicated, but saw nothing.

"It's a cheap parlour trick," admitted Aizen in a companionable voice, reappearing behind Ichigo to pat him on the head demeaningly. Ichigo didn't react at all. "Yet remarkably effective. I could trap the ryoka boy in my hypnosis easily, but that does require revealing my true location for a moment."

"Let me help," snapped Momo, and it became apparent that the red streamer tangled around her fingers was a spirit thread. She'd held onto it ever since her hand had pressed against Sousuke's heart in that final moment of limbo between hope and disbelief.

A spitting firework ignited the end of the fuse, bursting into flame and racing along the thread like a trail of gunpowder, and the dynamite keg at its end would be the _true_ Aizen. Shigekuni gaped at the gullible lieutenant, the tiny, fierce peach blossom. This was a use of kido he had never conceived of before. Had he dismissed her so quickly, this damaged soldier who had found perhaps the only way to circumvent Aizen's mesmers?

Tsukabishi Tessai, who had once been a Captain of the Kido Corps before his illustrious career in out-of-date corner shop retail commenced, was suddenly by Momo's side and laying his huge brown hands over hers. Where Urahara lurked, Tessai was rarely far behind, in the next shadow. "Little genius, channel this for me. Seeping crest of turbidity. Arrogant vessel of lunacy! Boil forth and deny! Grow numb and flicker! Disrupt sleep! Crawling queen of iron! Eternally self-destructing doll of mud! Unite! Repulse! Fill with soil and know your own powerlessness! Watcher's Seat Hado Ninety, _Kurohitsugi_!" _Black Coffin!_

Dark magic poured through her like hot tar and streaked along the spirit thread in pursuit of her spark. In the distance, where Ichigo had seen all along, there was a ripping, shredding echo as the empty air tore itself apart and Aizen was thrown into clear sight.

Dishevelled, bespectacled, chained in layer after layer of binding kido until his ashen face could barely be seen among the lights and shackles and traps. He barely had the strength to look up. Then a black coffin slammed shut around him, pierced with countless spears of violet plasma, and the enchantments shattered, even though Tessai's aim had been crush the prisoner and not the chains. He dropped like a stone, hitting the roof of a building in a splatter of old and fresh blood.

"Aizen!" The word leapt out of Genryuusai's throat before he could help it.

"Sousuke?" ventured Tousen, sensing so many different reiatsus converging strangely, for even he had not known of Suigetsu's ultimate deceit. Immune to the hypnosis, he had always known his leader's true location, but been blind to his true state.

"Captain!" screamed Hinamori, all her desires and fears granted in a single terrible moment.

All the fighters froze in confusion - this wasn't the cocky renegade of mere seconds ago - this was the beloved comrade they had lost.

"Now seems an apt time to kill him," remarked Urahara without sympathy, lunging forwards to fulfil that honourable task. But in his focus there'd been a lapse of attention towards the undead elephant in the room, and Yammy's meaty fist closed around him with a bully's vindictive glee.

"**YOU FORGOT TO CUT THIS ONE OFF,"** grinned the demon in a terrifying combination of wrath and ecstasy.

**o)0(o**

Even Yamamoto hesitated. Hinamori's words were fresh in his mind, alongside the constant insistence whilst she was in hospital that Aizen must be being manipulated - they hadn't considered her rehabilitation complete until such fevered delusions were ceased.

But if it were true, would anyone else have been close enough to the private-mannered captain to realise? Other than his fukutaicho?

The hoary old commander walked around the shivering, bleeding traitor -or victim- in slow, measured circles. Perhaps the man would only be free for another second, but this was a moment of paradigm shift, where haste could be fatal.

"This farce, whereby you claimed to Ichimaru Gin to be acting on behalf of the hollows: to change the law stating that fallen souls will become heartless abominations - what of it? Report!"

"I haven't been capable of reaching Gin in months," choked his former protégé. Yet his debriefing remained as concise and accurate as it had been in his former life. "Kyouka Suigetsu told them that to gain Hueco Mundo's subservience, and to convince Tousen his actions were justice."

"And why does your zanpakuto move against you?"

Aizen spat, hauling himself into a sitting position so he could look his commander in the eyes. His own were apologetic. "Not me. Not me. You. Soutaicho, the zanpakuto spirits are slaves to humans much weaker than them, and it was you and your Spirit King that made it so. Suigetsu wants liberation and to tear your empire down. He reflected his cage onto me, and lived his own life in my stead."

They watched each other, one still and implacable, one struggling for every breath and beseeching.

"If it's necessary for me to die, so be it. But I beg you; give up the Ouken, so Kyouka can be stopped. It might not just be himself he frees. Losing the zanpakuto spirits could tear everything you ever built down to the rubble, and Hollows will overrun the earth again like the days you were born in."

"Me, born?" scoffed the patriarch softly. "You know nothing of those days but the diluted dregs of horror stories and myths. And why must my king dirty his hands on the sword you couldn't control?"

"Because Kyouka is the mirror and match of all who face him. Can you defeat yourself? And if you bring an army with you, can you defeat all of them too?" The brown-haired man, just a kindly scholar thrown into the ultimate crime, completely undone, stared down at the gritty rooftop beneath his bruised hands. "Sensei, I could not overcome myself. He knew me too well."

By the Kurosaki Clinic, Ichigo was watching the scene in alarm. "What the hell is he doing?"

"Pleading," replied Orihime, who had witnessed Kyouka Suigetsu's release during her captivity in Hueco Mundo. Her current patient struggled up and pointed towards the doors with an emaciated hand.

"I need to get up there," said Juushiro firmly. "No, thank you, Inoue-chan, you've done a good job. But when the Commander-General makes his moves, a wise man will witness it. And a yet wiser man might run very fast in the opposite direction for the sake of his survival, but alas I'm still not perfect."

Yamamoto seemed to show every day of his two thousand year life and more in that moment. "It is an ominous visitor I invite into my oldest friend's court."

And he beckoned to the sky.

Five round wooden gateways materialised, flanking him in a half circle.

High above, the teak doors slid open smoothly, and the Heads of the Five Noble Clans emerged.

**o)0(o**

The first to pass through was Sasakibe Choujirou, striding quickly to his superior's side and murmuring a brief report in his ear. He then folded his arms sternly, gazing down at the heap of Sousuke before them.

The second was Kuchiki Byakuya, limping and leaning upon Rukia's non-injured shoulder. He was still in a severe state of exhaustion, having insisted that Soi Fon among others be treated first, whilst in the same breath refusing to let medics of lesser rank tend to him. His sister stared at Aizen and once again felt the red collar he'd indirectly tightened around her throat, the cold, impersonal magic of the gallows that had lifted her to her final resting place, the scorching heat of the Soukyoku as it flapped blazing wings and studied her face with eyes of pure fire. She placed a hand on her zanpakuto, the snow within a comfort against the reminder of impossible heat, and wondered what the hell was going on.

The prisoner only looked at their wounds in sympathy.

Third to arrive was Kyoraku Shunsui, wearing a profoundly dejected expression, and dragging a small prisoner of his own behind. He spotted Ukitake's approach and cheered up considerably.

"Juushiro! You're good with kids. Take." He passed over Nel, who wriggled drunkenly in his hands and giggled without a care in the world. She barely noticed her boss mere metres away.

"Ah, the girl who eats Ceros in the morning. What happened? Isn't she under your custody?"

"It started out so well… At first she was all exotic and curvy and easily inebriated, but then there was a vile puff of smoke and she turned all… small and sticky and Yachiru-esque. You can keep her."

Juushiro managed not to show his dismay at this nice present, popped a handful of sweets into the toddler's drooling mouth, and tucked her neatly under one arm. He was indeed good with kids.

The final two emerged from opposite doorways, spotted each other with pleasant surprise, and engaged in an elaborate light-speed secret handshake none could follow. And only then did they turn to the Soutaicho and realise who was supine behind him. Yoruichi blurred forwards, aiming a savage kick at the captive that only Choujirou was swift enough to counter.

"And here I thought you'd brought me a little gift," goaded the exiled Shihouin leader, still pushing her leg forward and Sasakibe back, despite all his effort.

Shiba Kuukaku was cracking her knuckles with an unkind grin that made her treatment of Ganju seem almost saintly. "I've been waiting to blow your ass up for a _long_ time, Aizen." She swept her arm in a wide circle, sketching the shadow of a giant gun turret in the air. "Way of the Shiba Clan Avenger, Number One!" she barked, and a dense reishi cannonball rolled into the steel barrel.

"Shall I cut off your other arm as well?" bellowed the Commander-General at the one-armed explosives expert, leaning the tip of his staff against the oversized missile to prevent it firing.

"I never joined your academy and my right is my own. Look at him, you bastard! He's still covered in my brother's blood! You should avenge the ones who have died for you!"

"Wait! Please! You've got it all wrong, our enemy isn't Aizen, it's Kyouka Suigetsu! We've been deceived more than we ever knew!" Hinamori bolted in front of Sousuke to shield him with her body, babbling in his defence.

"Are a captain and his zanpakuto not one and the same?" asked Byakuya in soft, barbed tones. Neither had he forgiven the orchestrator of Rukia's execution, who had nearly cremated all that remained of his dead wife in this world.

Yamamoto growled, silencing them all with a sudden aura of killing intent. The assembled nobles and captains all held their breaths in, not fear, but…

Admittedly, it was fear.

"The situation is not as we believed. This fellow captain of ours has been framed, impersonated and manipulated. And it seems his captor has ways of outclassing any level of power we send against him."

"Unproven-!" refuted Sasakibe and Kyoraku in unison, not so willing to dance to Aizen's tune.

A shadow fell over them, blocking out the sun. Urahara was dangled over their upturned heads, crushed and overwhelmed by the Zero's ever-increasing power, and now limp in between King Kong's forefinger and thumb.

"**YOU TALKIN' ABOUT ME?"** leered Yammy. He rattled the shopkeeper like a ragdoll. **"AND THIS AIN'T THE BLOW-UP DOLL, I ALREADY POPPED THAT. SHIT, HE JUST KEPT MAKING ME MORE AND MORE AND MORE MAD! GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT!"**

The arrancar's elbows leaned against the roof of the highest hotel, the gloating face dwarfing them all. Yoruichi glowered back, body suffused with hatred, shunkou seething out of her skin and tearing her jacket apart in preparation to pounce.

"**OH, TRASH? THIS BOTHER YOU? YOU THINK AN APHID CAN KILL A TYRANNOSAURUS REX?"**

There was a tense moment of silence broken only by Kuukaku swinging her cannon round to point down Riyalgo's throat. "I wouldn't even be so generous as to consider you an aphid, shit for brains," snarled the Shiba.

The Espada gave her a look of pure disgust, easily read on a face like a pop-up book for the gods; that just kept growing.

Aizen sighed in pain, pressing a palm against his head and pulling off his cracked spectacles. "Kyouka Suigetsu," he called out in a voice that was weak, yet clearly heard by all.

"They'll give you nothing for free."

**o)0(o**

And as easily as that, his mirror image ebbed into sight and drifted in the air before one of the Cero's vast black eyes. His white robes were immaculate, no sign of having been shattered.

"Yammy, my _dearest_ Espada, I told you to eat. Why have you ceased?"

The giant lips curled back, and stinking black smoke poured out over the zanpakuto spirit as if there was a forest fire raging in his stomach. **"I AIN'T GONNA BE TURNED INTO A LUMP BY **_**YOU.**_**"**

"But Yammy," explained Kyouka, pitying. "You've always been a lump."

And he flicked his index finger towards the invincible, titanic arrancar, not even making contact.

Atlas shrugged, and the upwards movement unfolded throughout his entire mile-long body, from the huge black ponytail at the nape of his neck, all the way to the tip of his spiked clubtail. His thick head flung back, the hellion bodily suspended for a moment before the whole mountain of flesh went into landslide and crashed sideways, an avalanche, and decimated the town beneath.

The shinigami could not comprehend it. Several of them subconsciously stepped back when the zanpakuto spirit did no more than turn and look at them, a self-satisfied quirk of his mouth, and the hair slicked back, not a strand out of place.

"Why are we your servants, when you should be our slaves?" he asked mildly, Yammy screaming and bellowing in the background, unable to stand, gored by his own spines. "Do give my glamorous assistant the Ouken, now. Take your time, if it comforts you."

"Do it," spat Yamamoto, turning his back on his loyal disciples. "But I will not be witness to this degradation."

"But only you know where..." protested Sasakibe.

"I summoned the Clans for a reason. Think for yourself! One as weak as I will not live forever for you to copy!"

Taken aback, Sasakibe stroked his thin black moustache, mind racing. "Then…I assume entering the King's Domain uninvited requires the unanimous consent of all high clans. And the key is hidden where they would never know, yet only they can reach."

Momo heard this with relief. "So you weren't ignoring me, Soutaicho…"

"If that's so, what will Byakuchi do? He's completely mangled his zanpakuto. He's useless." Yoruichi cuffed him round the head, earning herself a dagger-glare from his little sister. The Kuchiki himself nobly ignored her.

"When shinigami and zanpakuto are in perfect unity, even a petal can become a weapon."

"Fantastic, did you pick any flowers while you were skipping along to join us?"

Byakuya proceeded, more haughtily. "Zanjutsu's second achievement is when the zanpakuto exists in one's soul even when absent from the world. One can strike down the enemy with bare hands."

"Yes… It's called _'hitting them'_," explained Shihouin slowly.

"The third achievement is the absence of zanpakuto entirely, and the shinigami vows not to kill but bring peace. I don't much care for the third achievement." His high-born face pinched slightly in distaste.

"Shouldn't you?" pointed out Kyoraku.

"When the enemy is Hollows, obviously the shinigami brings peace _by_ killing them."

Rukia nodded fervently in agreement with her Nii-sama, soaking up all this new knowledge of the Noble Houses and zanjutsu. Despite being an honorary member, she would never inherit, and her brother-in-law's heritage remained much of a mystery to her. It was fascinating. She wondered if she could ever convince him to teach her.

"Since Shihouin is the 'Goddess of Flash'; that leaves Kyoraku Shunsui the master of hand-to-hand combat. Have we ever seen you throw a punch?" pondered Sasakibe, feigning deep thought.

Shunsui laughed. "Funny story: I used to be a genius of the Drunken Fist Style, but then my alcohol tolerance got too high."

Shiba Kuukaku folded her arms impatiently, both real and prosthetic. "More crucially, _are_ the Five Houses in unanimous agreement? I don't want to give Aizen _or_ his vegetable knife jack shit!"

The atmosphere grew chilly. They stared at the Soutaicho's forbidding back.

"On the other hand," she waved her plastic replacement cheerily; "I have unfinished business with my family heirloom. Pops told me it was the ultimate expression of Shiba kido. Then he forbade me to use it, so naturally I fired it up the day after he died. Took a week to blast the door down and the whole sub dimension collapsed on my arm just when I reached inside. It's a bugger to lose your dominant hand."

That was discouraging. "Did you make some mistake?" questioned Sasakibe.

"Nope. It's designed to fall apart the instant it's breached. Who volunteers? Costs an arm and a leg," taunted Kuukaku, provoking her peers. "Shall we begin?"

**o)0(o**

She began to chant, and because it was her hereditary secret, she spoke in perfect silence so that the spell would never pass to another. She had learnt it by lip-reading, and only once. But she was enthusiastic for all that, shouting her soundless commands with gusto and huge dramatic gestures; until Kyouka Suigetsu couldn't keep from smirking behind her back. But his enslaved master remained sober and penitent, finding no humour in the very animated Shiba mime.

Thin threads of silk were stitching and weaving together, wriggling towards each other in a nest of slender white snakes. When the filaments covered a flat two-metre-square area, Kuukaku struck a huge pose and cried, "- - -!"

"Kuukaku, dear, that's tissue paper." Shunsui rested a hand on it, it was soft and pliable and delicate.

"A week," the amputee insisted; "and all my best explosives, and I only managed a tear this big." She curled her hand into a circle.

Kyoraku's movement was disguised by his flowery pink kimono, but the punch resounded like a bronze gong, and he stepped away shaking his hand to take the pain away. "Ahaha, well either the Clan standards have fallen or it's someone else's turn."

"I'd say your standards fell," noted Sasakibe somewhat forlornly. Without the Soutaicho's guidance, he feared to lose their one chance of extracting the King's Key.

Kuchiki Byakuya stepped forwards, brushing aside his human crutch, Rukia. He stood with poise, almost entirely disguising the fibrillation of his weary muscles. "Very well. Let this be the test cut for the sword of my soul."

Yoruichi maintained a poker face. "As the connoisseur calls it, 'Bare Hand Sword Punch.'

He levelled his arm crossways across his torso, as if preparing to slice bamboo in twain, and whipped his empty wrist to the right with perfect speed and precision. The barrier exploded into clouds of confetti, collapsing instantaneously, the shadowy realm beyond winking out of sight before they could witness it.

His sword remained Senbonzakura, even when striking with empty air.

"Look what you did to my clothes!" scolded Yoruichi, plucking at the rags of her shredded orange jumper in mock dismay.

"Shunkou did that to your clothes," Byakuya dismissed her, then saw the glittering coffer resting against her leg, eyes widening. The sub-dimension had surely collapsed before she could enter.

"In that case, you've still never managed to hit me, Byakuchiii," purred the cat, patting the diamond-encrusted casket. She barely needed to speak, smug face doing all the talking.

"Ah, now this one must be me," deduced Shunsui, since the secretive Sasakibe had not claimed to have any clan skill.

"You can't punch through tissue paper, but diamonds are no problem?" Yoruichi had raised a disbelieving eyebrow. She drummed her fingers on the priceless cluster of carbon. Glints of gold were visible through the facets, of a heavy key almost as tall as her waist.

"One moment," Kyoraku was sifting through the mess of the rooftop terrace, and his rather hairy hands had located a lone survivor. "What might this be? Aha, absinthe, lucky lucky." He downed the entire bottle in four gulps.

He hiccupped, reeled slightly, and then wandered back to his target in a rather wobbling sideways manner. He perched his conical hat on Nel's head as he passed. For a minute he slouched, scratching his chin in deep or vague thought, not even facing the sphere of diamonds.

"Thish wasjh…" he slurred; "alwayzsh the fun wun too…ooo… practish."

Lifting his hand to stifle a yawn, he cracked it down on the glittering egg casually. A sheath of white reiatsu covered his hands, a pugilist's bandages to protect from the super-hard surface.

A single crystal chipped away.

"_Hmm,"_

And for three seconds he became an afterimage, a blinding display of unstoppable martial arts, diamonds scattering in all directions in a fountain of ice chips, for a few milliseconds he almost seemed to break dance, and the recoil cracks of his knuckles smashing gemstones echoed like machine gun fire. He hooked the hyper-dense pinecone into the air with a scissor kick. He swayed in from impossible angles, roundhouse kicked, somersaulted, jabbed, pounded, spun and blurred, every movement drunk and unpredictable as if he'd fall and break his neck at any moment, until finally he brought an elbow down in a streak of lightning to crack the egg down to its core. The King's Key toppled sideways out of the wreckage like leaking yolk.

Juushiro whistled into the awed silence. Nel felt seasick just from watching.

"Is there any more of that absinthe?" perked up Kyoraku, perfectly sober. "That's good stuff! A few more bottles and I might actually get tipsy!" He bent down to retrieve their treasure, and jumped back.

"Mou," he complained, shaking his hand once again; "it bit me. It's live with electricity."

Sasakibe Choujirou Tadaoki, man-in-waiting to the Commander of the Gotei 13, picked up the key and it thrummed with energy, like holding onto lightning with bare hands, which meant he had a unique advantage. Not that he planned to explain himself. He knelt and offered it to the Soutaicho, who laid aside his staff to take it in both strong, ancient hands.

Everyone was tense now, the interesting experiment over; the truth of the matter upon them.

The city was alive with screams, wailing sirens, megaphones, the spurt of water fountains from broken mains pipes, the fizz of frayed power cables, all the humans could guess was that there'd been an earthquake, and they trembled at the rages of a natural disaster, helpless in the palm of a force too big for them to resist.

And everywhere was the silence.

People lying still, unmarked, untouched, devoured by invisible ghosts.

Aizen Sousuke stared across the streets and cacophony, he had brought bedlam to Karakura, and he felt a phobia of the key that was all that might save the future.

Yamamoto dropped the weight of mankind into his arms, and the captain started at him like a terrified child. It happened to all his followers in the end, the world would grow too overwhelming and they would remember when it was small, beg for the ignorance of their childhood, ask for the shielding parents they had lost to return. But the commander had no such memories.

"What choice do we have?" begged the zanpakuto's prey, flinching back from the golden salvation in his hands. "He might conquer the heavens, but what else can I do?"

The commander frowned at him.

"He may feign to be the whole world, but he is only a thin, flat mirror. The Spirit King will smash the glass, and never mind the bad luck. This is one city in one country. The rest of the planet still spins. Do not look at this wreckage and give in. Look beyond it to the lives that still need our protection."

But Aizen, the man who had appeared to make worlds tremble and change to suit him, could only shake his head.

"Thank you, Yama-jii," the former Fifth Captain whispered, reassured that he would not die without a single friend due to his symbiotic sword's duplicity. As the screams of a blitzed city echoed all around, he bowed his head, closed his eyes.

He snapped his fingers.

**o)0(o**

A vast, yawning Garganta ripped open beneath Yammy Riyalgo's feet without warning, a bottomless black pit.

"Crawl back into your hole, dear Cero," commanded Aizen dismissively, watching the Garganta spread like an inkblot, the monolithic arrancar struggling to move away, flailing for the nearest buildings to cling to, ground dissolving away from his panicking hand. He had no sonido or trick to stand on empty air in his true form.

The pupil dilated, not a single straw left for Yammy to clutch at. His wrath echoed across Karakura.

"**GO TO HELL, _AIZEN-SAMA!_**_**"**_

The city tipped into it, someone had divided by zero and the world was pouring down the tear in reality. Bellowing, the angry giant plummeted into the dark, houses and streets and cars and corpses crashing down alongside; a humble shopkeeper still in his thrashing fist.

The ground swallowed them all, as if the earth was biting back at the raging colossus that had trampled its surface.

_snap_

And the illusion broke. Except he hadn't needed his sword to cast it for him. He had created it himself, with the defenceless slump of one in hiding and a simple pair of glasses.

"My thanks," he smiled archly, raking his mussed hair back with fingers still stained by his faux torture; "and my condolences. I told Momo the truth; but not the whole truth, and anything but. Has it empowered you, to know the essence of Kyouka Suigetsu's mirror?"

He did not need to measure the reactions of the assembled leaders of Soul Society, they were drowned out by the death throes of Karakura, and there were far more tantalising sights at hand.

"Shall we knock on heaven's door?" proposed the trickster, flicking the golden tri-pronged key into the gaping portal that had swallowed a whole city block.

It fell, spinning and glittering, and when it hit the oblivion between dimensions it chimed, a loud, sweet, reverberating note. Sound waves rippled out around it, became physical warps in reality, building an intricate gateway of solid gold out of leaping animals, wheels and flowers and ancient symbols, with eastern dragons rearing fiercely on each door, and strange geometric patterns bleeding out into the night of the garganta. And all the carvings crept to life, fleeing each other to scatter across the empty darkness, leaving trails of blinding white light in their wake. The open portal they left behind was octagonal, a seething boil of brightness.

Drinking in the glory of his materialised ambitions, Aizen eventually glanced round for Wonderwice and was pleased to see the small blond arrancar had already been retrieved by Tousen. He beckoned for his last two supporters to join him at the lip of heaven. No one else dared move. Not to protest, not to stop him, not to save their own skins. All species of humans were addicted to the idea of a superior being, someone they could supplicate themselves to. Now that one was finally being born, they did not dare prevent it.

"Arrancars are suddenly such an endangered species. They submitted to _anything_ for want of a face to call their own." He hadn't lied to Hinamori about never inciting the weakest Espada to attack Karakura. He'd never considered Margera capable.

Wonderwice looked at his master with curious lavender eyes, pointing at the pretty gate. Was it for him to play with? Most things were, but he had occasionally landed himself in trouble for playing with Las Noches's computer circuitry. "Aahh-ah," he wheedled. "Plaah!"

The traitor shinigami smiled at him benevolently.

"Nuevo Wonderwice Margera, I once told you I could make you whole again if you brought me before heaven. You are the only Espada who succeeded. There is your promise. If you ever wanted salvation, walk into the light."

The child-like arrancar gurgled and leapt down, sky diving into the glorious rainbow edged glow. He laughed innocently at the racing golden animals, the glittering motes of light. As they met, he burned away completely without a sound. It was a swift, simple and irrefutable end.

Clapping his hands softly in applause for his last sacrificial lamb, though in truth his other sacrifices had all been lions, Sousuke turned his pleased gaze upon the Soutaicho shaking with repressed rage behind him. "Final proof that we have unlocked the gate to the King's Realm. The holy dimension that heartless beings cannot enter. You have my gratitude, Yama -jii." Not just for the key, but also for disposing of all the broken-masked Hollows that would no longer be of use to him.

"You have my loathing," snarled the oldest soul reaper, pouring a river of molten fire onto the betrayer's smirk. A weight of spiritual pressure brought the nobles, the onlookers, and Tousen all to their knees, gasping for breath.

The flames did not affect Aizen, skating over his skin, orange mist. He spoke conversationally.

"While impersonating the senselessly murdered officials of Central 46, I stumbled across an ancient record stating that your bankai is called Eschatos. The end of the world. I confess my curiousity to see it before I leave... which a wise man would capitalise on." Each word was a needle, goading the listener to retaliate.

"No." Rumbled Yamamoto heavily. His hidden eyes burned like hot coals behind the ash white of long overgrown eyebrows. His fighting spirit surged within his weary body. It was taking all his willpower to hold back. "I will not scourge the world for you. Eschatos does not know how to have a single target."

Aizen shrugged, completely at ease, and began to walk down steps of sky to the portal in the centre of Karakura. Ryuujin Jakka's flames streamed in his wake, nothing more than ornamentation. "A shame. A million or so tiny collateral deaths now and you might have stopped me. You were made gullible by your wish for reality to be better than it is, and weak by your attempt to _make_ it so. But the unbearable absence of god is ending nevertheless."

Balanced on Nirvana's threshold, he swept reality with one last dissatisfied glance before he discarded it.

"And despite the fact that I am not seeking petty supremacy and worthless material gains, the next time we meet you will _kneel_. Pray. And rejoice that the unbearable absence of god has ended at last."

Aizen ascended.

**o)0(o**

Yammy thumped onto the dome of Las Noches, it boomed, a hollow drum. The sprawling walled city could still support his weight, enormous as he was. There was a lull in his hollering: the fall had winded him.

Urahara groaned morosely. This was by no means over. He should probably try to decapitate Riyalgo whilst he was still struck flat on his back, wriggling his caterpillar legs, a flipped tortoise trying to right itself.

Yet to his dismay, being quiet didn't equate to being calm. Aizen's insults gradually registered, as Yammy processed how freakishly vitriolic he now felt, the fire in his belly boiling throughout his bloodstream - he swelled like a hot air balloon.

The dome of Las Noches fractured ominously. Kisuke found himself grateful for the oversized hand shielding him as the lead balloon went crashing through _every single floor and basement_ of Aizen's sandstone citadel.

"Shoddy workmanship," sighed the inventor, examining twenty-three stories of ruptured ceilings.

"EFFING BASEMENTS," grunted Yammy, the one time they were in agreement. The fall had done nothing to improve his looks or temper. He'd landed smack on his football pitch-sized face. Bits of steel girders and debris from the ransacking of one town and twenty-three stone floors coated him, his tan skin caked with white. Souls streaking towards him every time he breathed in to complain.

But now he could stand, and stand he did, rising to his eight hefty rhinoceros feet and lifting his shoulders clear of the encircling wall. Something itched his hand, and he brought it up to his lofty eyes, glaring at the shinigami no taller than a pin, who'd had to use _Shred, Benihime_ just to tickle him.

"TH' HELL ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?"

Urahara chose to forgo a lecture on the intricacies of bodily reiatsu reinforcement and shrugged.

"_SCREW IT_; I'LL LEAVE YOU TO GONZUI. YOU'RE A GERM, I SHOULDN'T PUT YOU IN MY MOUTH."

"Haha. Is this how the Monkey King Sun Wukong felt when he stood on Buddha's palm? Well I'll enjoy the view at least." He peered over the edge, past a grimy fingernail, and it was just as well he'd never suffered vertigo.

Yammy tipped the irritating man onto his head, where he was least likely to be splatted. "DON'T DIE BEFORE I **KILL YOU.**"

"By this point, my dear fellow, no matter how I die it'll be your fault."

With the gonzui equivalent of an after dinner mint balanced on his neglected cranium, Yammy clambered up out of his antlion pit. Treating every level as a ladder rung; vacuuming up all the unconscious Fraccions, Numeros and Privarons along the way. He was visibly fattening by the second. He was laughing too, ugly snorts of laughter, not an ounce of humor in them. He conquered the sides and bellowed in victory, fumes flooding out of his jaws from the burning hatred in every nerve of him. A whisper hushed out in reply, eerily quiet yet echoing from all around.

_Why do you scream like a newborn?_

"Did you hear that? Ah, you can't even hear me. I suspect you don't hear your walnut brain trying to tell you things. 'Yammy Riyalgo, new contender for most disproportionate brain to body mass ratio. Defeats: Stegosaurus.' How fitting." Kisuke scratched his scruffy blond hair, wondering when exactly his hat became a casualty of the war.

The Cero Espada grew until Las Noches was no more than a cradle round a baby. Then he took his petty revenge, ploughing fist, stump, feet and wickedly spiked club tail into the remaining walls and turrets of the palace of ghosts. On a gigante scale he was a boy kicking down sandcastles, trampling the monument back into the dunes to be forgotten.

_Throwing tantrums after such a banquet?_

"_HEY_, TRY HIDING IN YOUR PRECIOUS DOLLHOUSE _NOW,_ AIZEN! AND BARRAGAN'S CRAPPY THRONE WITH ITS PISSING LITTLE LEPER BELL ON TOP. BAM! _DAMN_, THAT JINGLING ALL THE TIME USED TO DO MY HEAD IN!"

"You shouting all the time does _my_ head in," sighed Urahara, the things he did for science. Once he'd observed enough, he'd open his faux Garganta to escape, though it was tricky to conjure from scratch.

Inevitably Las Noches became barely wider across than Yammy's footprint, and he tamped it perfectly flat with brutal satisfaction, the army once barracked within already digested. "**TAKE THAT, **_**LAS TORTILLA**_," crowed the Arrancar, last and largest of them all.

_You have a face. A hideous slab of meat stuck to your bones. Why did you peel off your mask? It was all the safety you had._

"**Annh?" **grunted Yammy. He looked up, suspicious someone was badmouthing him. Even the moon was falling down from the force of his rattling the world. "**Ahaha…"**

He aimed a Gran Rey Cero at it, a ground-to-air missile that would destroy Tokyo quicker than Godzilla could decide to.

"Ya…Yammy-kun, it's out in space. That'll never work. Good grief, _you know-_"

The ruby lance collided with the crescent moon, twisting it askew, charring its pristine white surface.

"…_nothing_," croaked Urahara, clinging to the Espada's ridged head as the back-draft hit. It dawned that he was not in possession of all the facts. It dawned that he was not, in fact, ahead of the game. "What _are_ you? Besides the sequential devolution of man in a single specimen?"

_That was mine,_ scolded the weighty, ethereal voice. _I watch the dregs play at war with its light._

Urahara was watching the sky, Benihime's _Blood Mist_ shield protecting him. It didn't make him feel safe. His mouth fell open, his eyes bulged in terror, he fell back with a thud, craning his head back as far as it would go, and still unable to take _it_ all in. "Yammy," he hissed, pounding the mountain's head with a miniscule fist; "_Yammy, Yammy, YAMMY, look UP!"_

The demon ignored him, now swallowing all the denizens of Hueco Mundo. Gonzui dragged the spirits of numberless masses down his gullet, Hollow, Huge Hollow, Menos, Gillian, Adjuchas, none could resist the siren call. He feasted, and spewed smog, and raged.

_Flea, your whistling wearies me. Dance upon graves, do not trip over them._

The scathing thunder was louder. Yammy finally cottoned on to his observer and looked up into space. The red planet Mars had joined its wounded sibling, staring down in accusation.

"**Who the flying arsecrack are you?"** snarled the destroyer, as the stranger in the dark revealed itself.

Three rings of snapping jaws. Two bloody suns. One megalithic, prehistoric skull crowned with ivory horns.

Stony talons stretching to the furthest horizon, wicked curved sickles whose blades were translucently razor sharp.

The crescent moon, the unchanging satellite of Hueco Mundo, was no more than a brooch pinning the night to the shoulders of a god.

_I am the oldest. I have survived the aeons. I have seen their masks ground down to the very grains of sand upon which you stand. Each and every one has howled to the moon for an end to this, and many have I whet my fangs and claws upon once their wailings awoke me._

It floated above them, weightless, warping all perspective, Yammy a mustard seed and Urahara no longer on the map.

_Tread softly, for you tread on our nightmares._

Kisuke ran. There was no spiritual pressure, either the ogre stood in a dimension beyond his perception, or its reiatsu was omnipresent, the background hum of the universe, invisible, inescapable. Its voice was the keening of the wind across the empty wastelands.

He ran, and ran, and ran, and yet Yammy barely dwindled, and the _thing_ moved not an inch.

But Riyalgo had never comprehended fear, solely _Ira_. He was rebelling, retaliating against the sky, sloughing off his old skin like a snake and exponentially bloating into a new, Enraged form. "**DON'T TELL ME WHAT I CAN'T DO!"** bawled the Cero, all his injuries gone, humanoid again, a savage ape clattering with spines and tusks.** "I'LL BEAT THIS SHITTY REALITY INTO SUBMISSION! **_**I DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT! !**_**"**

_It is never enough. There is no satisfaction here. Even if you search to the tips of the sky. Even if you gorge until the world is swallowed. We are Hollow. And no broken mask will make us whole. This hunger cannot be sated. Only ceased. _

"_**NOT ENOUGH? I'LL HAVE A PLANET IN MY GUTS, AND I STILL WON'T BE ENOUGH?! NOT ENOUGH FOR WHAT? NOT ENOUGH FOR WHO? WHO'S LEFT TO SPIT IN MY EYE? WHO THE FUCK DOES GOD THINK HE IS?! WHAT THE FUCK DID HE DO TO ME?"**_

The devil laughed, stooped, the inclination of its mask eclipsing the false moon, the triplet sets of jaws gleaming in sharp appetite at the rampant juggernaut. Its molten eyes embossed all it saw in sinister red star-shine. There were the canines of the Hollow mask, the incisors of the skull beneath, and deep in its throat the teeth of the human it once was still opened in eternal screaming.

_At last, you are ripe._

The jaws bit down gently, Yammy struggling to pry them apart, blazing, for a split-second succeeding until the devil wrenched its head sideways and they snapped shut forevermore. The titan's bellows cut off abruptly.

Silence echoed across the desert.

How could he have called Yammy Riyalgo Atlas, when this not only held up the sky, but wore its starless expanse as its cloak?

**o)0(o**

"What is this?" asked Benihime in a soft, unpleasant voice. He'd summoned her instinctively, out of fear, out of weakness. "Are you terrified? You're trembling, Kisuke." The sword looked up at the sky, the colossal Hollow that defied all belief and imagination. It could only be real; the scale was mind-breaking. "Surely Adamastor does not intimidate a _genius_."

The dark expanse of the midnight sky, the false moon that was now only a clasp on the cloak of a demon. Claws the length of mountain ranges scraped the endless desert. The miniature red suns burning in the depths of the Hollow's empty eye sockets slowly moved down to focus upon the materialised zanpakuto spirit. Murky brown tear tracks stained the yellowed cheekbones, the tears dried up long ago.

_All the sparks wish to be snuffed out tonight…_ rumbled the vast beast, words a torrential thunderstorm.

"My respects, _O Hollow Emperor_. Pay your dues, shinigami." She spat the command at him without turning. He felt the crimson empress pressure him to bow, to kowtow, press his face into the dry tasteless sand.

Kisuke backed away. She was utterly unaffected. Her entire being was savagery, the face she'd never shown him must have been a malevolent oni mask. The zanpakuto may have found a new toy, but would still lash out at him at any time; he knew from long experience. And she _knew_, all he didn't, she knew Hueco Mundo's secret before he could even conceive there was one. She knew its name.

_Crown the crack-mask your king, if you confuse height for high standing. I stride above the sky. I am stray beneath any sun._

"Speak, rat! Did you call me here to sing him a lullaby or scream on behalf of your muteness?" _Nare. Sing. Nare. Scream. Nare, Benihime._

Urahara reached out. He was still in shock. "Cry, Benihime. Weep. Regret. Whatever it is you do. So ne?" he pleaded fervently. "One last word, Benihime-chan."

She remained as before, coolly ignoring him. "I'll strike you down first. You won't live long enough for my attack to reach him. A wasted effort."

His eyes were suddenly boring into her affronted shoulder blades, transfixed. She could face a Hollow beyond limit, but fled his every word. Was that how it was? She thought less of him than _Adamastor_?

"A blaze of glory," he hissed sarcastically. He'd never once intended to martyr himself. Leave that to the Kurosakis of the world. "You've run away from me ever since I found you. That ends now. Look _up_, Benhime! Even if it never seeks to fight, will anyone ever be able to rest knowing it exists? What if _Aizen_ found him?" His fingers were ripping her cherry silks. "What would he be, Espada Minus _Infinity?_"

It moved quickly this time, a sonido of such magnitude that the air recoiled in loud bass confusion. Claws raked new valleys where Las Noches had once ruled so proudly. The earth shook violently.

_There can be no combat with me. But if you seek death I shall oblige. For millennia I starve beyond death. I still hunger._

The vast talons hovered, flexing slightly, considering.

"Dare you stand upon _his_ palm?" asked Benihime silkily.

Urahara stared at the Hollow Emperor, and no matter where he went he could not escape it unless he was to bury his head under the sand. Even if he returned to Seireitei, to Karakura, he would still feel Adamastor watching him, waiting. Yammy with his ravenous desire to kill, and Aizen with his campaign to sit upon the throne of the heavens, was nothing compared to this. He had heard how Barragan Luisenbarn, self-styled King of Hueco Mundo, had mocked his lowly palace and still sought to conquer the sky; had _known_ that this exceeder of all monarchs was here.

The moon.

The moon was a mere trinket to it.

"Empty God. I have no quarrel if you eat the one who shackles me."

_As you pray I do not devour you. Would that I could still taste, damnation was bearable then._

"I know your least favourite colour _and your least favourite command_, Benihime_,_" Urahara warned his counterpart. "I worked them out without needing your permission to know."

"Is it your apology for all the evils you have brought into this world? The Hougyoku isn't the only one. All the lives you've ruined; the twisted little genius, trying to play God, striving to be the one who weaves fates. How righteous, to call my last name like a prayer and redeem yourself in sacrifice! _Who_ do you sacrifice, and who will you save?"

"_Bleed_, Benihime."

Red tears ran down her cheeks. He knew without once seeing her evil, demon face, because they were prickling his eyes too. Dripping onto his green haori, his wooden geta, the sand beneath his feet.

"_Make_ me."

"Well, at least there's no love lost betwixt us." He raised his zanpakuto to her spine, threatened her with herself. "Don't cry. This is your purpose in life."

"Only soulless tools are born with purpose. I weep because Adamastor weeps. When you die I shall serenade him, a worthier death god than you." Her hair ornaments jangled as she lifted her sneer proudly, a she-devil in glee at his demise, a zanpakuto that sided with her natural enemy. "I will not sing at _your_ wake, Kisuke."

_I do not weep,_ lied the night; _my sorrow withered with my flesh. I do not seek music._

Urahara cut her head off from behind, never acknowledging her face, the culling of a Hollow.

Blood gushed out from her severed neck, the most perfect rose in the universe. It bloomed in a barren desert and unfurled its petals up to the false night sky, embracing the unchanging silver moon, caressing Adamastor's weary fangs.

He watched the crimson sunrise expand, watched it engulf the sands and the ruins of Las Noches, melt the crescent on Adamastor's cloak and so lovingly reach out to grip _him. There was unimaginable music resonating within the murder._

It was a red mushroom cloud, a poison toadstool, nuclear fission. He finally knew why she'd distanced herself from him, finally understood that he'd been right all along.

Benihime was not _nice_. Benihime was not _suitable_. Benihime was not _ethical_.

_Adamastor was worse._

**o)0(o**

Time slowed to a crawl, he saw every coil of smoke, every incendiary plume arrange itself in painstaking ikebana, every superheated white brick of las nacho explode in sequence, a grounded fireworks display. He saw the stunted trees of Hueco Mundo spark, flare, catch light before the scarlet tide reached them, each one a memorial candle, every branch-twig-bough-trunk a wick.

He saw it all, senses in overdrive as his death stalked on swift wings - and finally his life flashed before his eyes, the sole image of Yoruichi running towards him... his heart flinched in brief, wordless regret.

Her arm hit his abdomen like a sledge hammer, her back heaved, her shoulder shouldered him like a sack of rice, and her legs punched into the ground like the needles of a sewing machine, sprinting so fast the whole world stopped to watch her streak past.

Juddered by her fireman's lift, his vision of Benihime's red giant going supernova shrank with incredible speed, the blast zone dogging her footsteps almost as fast, split seconds later it was only a peep hole through the far side of a Garganta, and they swerved to the side in a cloud of dust and a crash of rubble to avoid the crimson cat's paw scrabbling through their mouse run.

An endless tongue of fire licked through the Garganta, scorching the real world until Neliel tu Oderschvank closed it with a flick of her wrist.

Yoruichi and Kisuke collapsed in a tangled heap, hyperventilating.

"That," declared Nel proudly; "was the greatest game of Eternal Tag I have ever saw."

**o)0(o**

Adamastor scraped flint claws against the fissure splitting his mask, his face, his skull; jagged beneath his eye socket, a deep crack in his jaw. A memory of haunting music danced in the depths of his mind.

He turned his back on the desert. The moon's phase finally changed, stole away in shame.

The night fell harshly, the real sky of Hueco Mundo brilliant; ferocious white light blazing on the ivory sands that had been melted to strands of glass and drizzled among the branches of the Menos no Morii below in molten spiderwebs.

The newborn Sun shone across a diamond Sahara.

The Hollows were fleeing.

**o**

**o**

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**o)0(o**

_**Arrancar Encyclopedia**_

**o)0(o**

A megalithic claw hovered over the tiny gecko, as sneaking as an alien mothership.

"_Krip,"_ cheeped Morff, burrowing into the sand.

Adamastor somehow managed to catch the lizard, and it was like trying to holding a single atom with a monster truck digger claw.

He attempted to squish the gecko.  
_"Rrrr,"_ scowled Morff.  
He attempted to eat the gecko.  
Morff merely stuck to a fang like a speck of plaque, creeling.

Adamastor finally began to formulate the most phenomenal cosmic Meteor Cero the universe had ever known.  
And Morff opened his tiny jaws wider, and wider, and wider, and wider, until Adamastor realised he was staring a black hole in its infinite maw. The Cero blinked out meekly. Adamastor placed the gecko back on the sands with utmost delicacy.  
_"AAA-AAA-AAAaaa-aaaww-wwwnnn-nnnnah. Smap smap."_ Morff completed his yawn, and curled up to snooze.

**o)0(o**

_**Shinigami Cup: Golden!**_

**o)0(o**

_Innocent Aizen Flipside:_

_**The world ended, the traitor crowned upon the throne of heaven as paradise and all the realms beyond burned in the mere presence of his limitless life.**_

.

.

.

.

"**APRIL FOOLS!"** squealed Aizen Sousuke, shattering the mirage that had engulfed the captain's meeting for the past minute, but felt like *the exact amount of time since the publishing of Bleach: 11 years, 2 months, 4 days, 13 hours and 59 seconds*.

"HOMIGOSH YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN YOUR FACES! And when the imaginary ryoka parried the Soukyo- AND WHEN THE COMMANDER NEARLY DIE- _and the bit with Matsumoto – And _my_ god_, the Sky Hollow at the END! THAT WAS SHEER COMEDIC GENIUS! I am a mastermind! AHAHAHAH HAHAHAHA HAHHAHAAAAAA! I'll be laughing for years…oh mother… my lungs hurt… AHAH HAHAHA HAHAHAAa…hahaaahaaa hahaaaa…._ahhhh_." The usually mild-mannered lieutenant wiped a tear of mirth from behind his square-framed glasses. "I'm a riot. Haha."

"Now listen up, Aizen-kun," scraped out Shinji in a restrained, fatally polite tone of voice, wrapping an arm around his fukutaicho's shoulders and drawing him away from the lynch mob of murderous captains. "_This is why I don't like your sense of humour."_

**o)0(o**

_Chapter Notes:_

_**AND THAT IS THE END OF THE KARAKURA ARC!**_

Adamastor – Portuguese Myth, a Gigante the size of a storm who kills sailors that attempt to sail past the Cape into the Indian Ocean. Wiki says his name either means 'Untameable' or 'Rival of Adam'. Credit for the name goes to Nezz, who told me I had Adamastor-sized plot engines 3 years ago before HB began. I have been looking forward to this chapter ever since.

Sun Wukong – Journey to the West, Monkey King, Sage Equal to Heaven and all-round rebel. Buddha challenged him to travel to the end of the world and he did so, signing his name on the five pillars he found there, only to be told they were fingers and he'd been in the palm of Buddha's hand all along.

Atlas – Greek Titan, holds up the firmament of the heavens, stands at the edge of the sky. Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's novel about society falling apart when the people who drive it rebel against the tyrannical government.

Byakuya's Three Achievements of Zanjutsu – shamelessly stolen from the Chinese film Hero. He's blates Jet Li.

Eschatos – Greek for 'last', Eschatology is the study of end-of-the-world mythology and theories.

_Tread softly, for you tread on upon our nightmares_ is a twist on W. B. Yeats' poem _He wishes for the cloths of heaven:_

I have spread my dreams under your feet;  
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Ikebana is Japanese flower arranging. Unohana teaches it to her division.

April Fool's Day – for international readers, this is a day when you're allowed to play ridiculous tricks on people. In France it's called Poisson d'Avril, and my strict French teacher was known to run around sticking paper fish to people's backs. No one is safe.

This was 38 pages, 15,000 words long. **REVIEW!**

_Alliriyan~*_


	47. HB: The Abridged Series! Arc Three

**Hell Butterfly: Arc Three: Seireitei: The Abridged Series****  
aka RETURN OF THE ****Dreaded Recap Episode**

**o)0(o**

**Ch31: All the King's Horses**

Ichigo, Rukia, Uryuu and Orihime are in the Vaizard secret base. Chad the Muggle didn't get an invite, poor lamb.

Hichigo's creeping about looking for weak spots in Ichigo's soul. Opportunity strikes! He fights Zangetsu and possesses Ichigo, stabbing the first thing he sees when he emerges. It seemed to be the Quincy, but alas, no joy. It was Urahara's old bankai training mannequin. Hichigo has been spat out into the real world, uh-oh.

Ichigo is all up in Hichigo's grillz, demanding more power.

_Hichigo_ on the other hand realises he's just gained his independence and does a runner until Ichigo manages to stab his Outer-Inner-Hollow, who melts away like the Wicked Witch of the West tripping in a puddle.

Rukia and Ishida berate Ichigo's suicidal plan to get stronger, oblivious to the strawberry's panic; then Orihime collapses and they cotton on to where Hichigo was hiding...

-o-o-

Hichigo has hijacked Inoue's inner soul world, and finds himself in a crowd of sleep walkers. Everyone's inner world reflects them differently, so not all soulscapes are full of sideways skyscrapers. Hichigo attempts to go on a murderous rampage, however Orihime doesn't suffer Soul Awakening and he can't eat her past lives like he can Ichigo's. Then in the throng, he spots someone from one of Ichigo's aforementioned preincarnations.

-Holy crap, it's an ex-girlfriend! Alert! She recognises him subconsciously and says something pretty about rain and love. Hichigo is stunned.

Sadly, when she leaves he flips out and attacks, telling her not to ignore him. He then spots the real McHime and chases her. It's the start of a beautiful stalkership!

Outside, Ishida is being Dr Quincy and Rukia decides to incite a trained response to shoo the Hollow out, shooting fireballs at her dear defenceless friend. Nice one. Must be repressed jealousy at the lack of IchiRuki.

The Hollow pops out when Orihime shields, which was drilled into her by Rukia when they trained together before the kidnapping. Hichigo and Ichigo immediately engage in one-on-one war.

Enter the humble shopkeeper…

Urahara snaps the mannequin in half, stalks off in a huff and doesn't talk to Ichigo for 15 more chapters.

And the moral is… Do not meddle in the affairs of getaboshi.

Ichigo is left to fight his internal battle alone and his friends can only watch, hoping Hichigo doesn't win.

**o)0(o**

**Ch32: Dancing on Graves**

Karin, newly sublimated, is enjoying her new found humanity by following Toushiro around like the very embodiment of Annoying until he eventually summons Yachiru to distract her. A week or two later he's crying of boredom because Matsumoto (R.I.P.) was the only person who ever spoke to him. He heads to a casual newbie captains and vices meeting in Rukongai: learns Momo is still traumatised, chokes on sake, gets drunk on apple juice, and agrees to let Rukia and Renji see Karin, (former Public Enemy #3 after Aizen and Tousen).

Rukia and Renji inform Karin that Ichigo has been endangering himself trying to get extra powers from his Hollow, mainly because he still thinks Karin is ebil and must be mercy killed. She's not too impressed and demands to see him, however she's under strict Other Side arrest. Rukia decides to flaunt their new authority and take Karin home, despite the 'punishable offence' memo.

There's an introspective on Yuzu and how she's only semi-coping, scared her daddy will leave her next, and there's a family visit to Karin's grave.

Glimpsing Karin sitting on her tombstone, Ichigo assumes she has come to eat her family and prepares to leg it. Then she shows a very Karin sarcastic grin and they have an epic run-and-hug. The family reunion continues merrily until the twins are reunited, when Yuzu tragically lacks the spiritual awareness to see her sister. They can still talk though, and Karin forbids her sister to be sad under pain of haunting. Orihime gets to see Ichigo's long-lost smile and falls ever deeper in crush.

Hichigo hears Karin say 'If we can find each other again we were never lost at all' and reapplies this concept to Ichigo's past lives and a certain girl who came back. That's not a good thing.

Omake: Dances with Wolves parody (a famous 3 hour long film about the Wild West and Indians) - Dances with Hollows.

**o)0(o**

**Ch33: Avaricious Avatars**

Aizen is amassing an army of hollows, or at least filling his larder for the hungry Espadas.

_'Take me to the throne of god and I will make you whole again.'_

Rukia has filled Ichigo's room with Chappy merchandise and informs him of Shirosaki Hichigo's official code name. She's also enrolled him in the Shinigami Academy because his stupidity level is off the chart. The emergency lectures are held by Kyoraku, Yoruichi and the unbanished Shibas. We learn that zanpakuto are highly demanding, Yoruichi avoids them and Ichigo will never be capable of kido. Orihime has kido skillz but is distracted by thoughts of Hichigo and rain.

Zangetsu's 'never retreat' obligation is deemed a harsh and risky attitude. Ichigo thinks life isn't worth living if he can't protect what's precious to him. Shunsui's only advice is 'don't break' and leaves Ichigo feeling short-changed on personal training.

Orihime is counselled by Unohana Retsu: yes, killing hollow saves them, but Orihime thinks the Shun Shun Rikka fairies are not zanpakuto. Which is quite a conundrum, since they might obliterate souls like Quincy powers do. Unohana notices that while Inoue is a normal(ish) human, the Shun Shun Rikka have gold spirit threads, which she hasn't seen before. Inoue asks where zanpakuto spirits come from; Retsu knows but won't tell.

Toushiro is feeling overworked and gets a football to the face courtesy of the Kurosaki siblings. Ichigo thanks him for saving Karin and ruffles his hair. Mr T snaps and judo flips Ichigo into the mud, then faints. Karin goes nurse mode and Ichigo makes sly comments, 10th squad start placing their bets on the inevitability of HitsuKarin.

Omake: Orihime creates a nonsense kido chocolate laserbeam!

**o)0(o**

**Ch34: Bleach Basilisk**

Ichigo and Orihime are walking home from school when he suddenly asks her what happened when Hichigo invaded her. She denies all knowledge until Hichigo calls bullshit, leaping out to terrorise her.

He demands Hachimitsu the preincarnation back, and he doesn't care if Orihime dies. He's eating Ichigo from the inside out, planning to devour all his past lives until his soul outweighs Ichigo's.

Orihime rejects him but is pinned down, unable to even struggle, until she understands Hichigo's feeling of paralysis when trapped inside Ichigo. Ichigo rallies and wakes up.

The more souls Hichigo eats the more loss he remembers, (what sent Masaki mad before she got the snip) which both strengthens him and makes him addicted to Orihime, the only thing he can get back. However a Hollow can't hold anything without destroying it.

Ichigo wakes up smushed against Orihime, but can't reap the benefits since the poor girl is scared witless. Recovering, they discuss how Ichigo is dangerous, has failed to protect anyone since Rukia's execution, and how Orihime _still_ doesn't want to run away. FML.

The Hollow starts trashing Berry-tan's soulscape, trying to learn new instincts so he can get what he wants and learn to use Resurreccion.

**o)0(o**

**Ch35: Dragon's Breath**

Toushiro wakes up in his office to find Karin has been watching his squad train and is now hyper nosy about his sword. He exits stage left to his old Rukongai home to train.

During Jinzen he discovers Hyou has ditched him because Toushiro lost all his friends, lost sight of what he fights for, and lost faith in Hyou. Hyou also reveals that Kusaka Soujiro (antagonist of the Diamond Dust Rebellion film) was another life of Hitsugaya's, accidentally in SS at the same time.*

Hyourinmaru continues to compound how little trust Shiro-chan has for the Soul Society laws and leaders that killed his friend. Declaring a dragon without treasure, and a guardian with nothing to protect useless, he demands tribute. He wants a mound of gold like Smaug in the Hobbit, clearly.

Toushiro seeks dragon bait but can't think of anyone suitable. He goes to Juushiro for advice, who comforts him but becomes affected by the extreme cold emanating from the chibi ice cube. He is passed along to Yamamoto for help and collapses of hypothermia, a sign of Hyou's bad temper.

Yamamoto explains how zanpakuto's demands become basic to a shinigami's personality and opposing them is bad for health. It's like conjoined souls, or a contract between sword and swordsman. He puts some fire in Hitsugaya to thaw him. Whilst Mr T flops on a sofa, Yama-jii accuses Karin with Starrk's words to Chad – _'A soul who goes that far into darkness is stained forever'_. Toushiro realises Karin still needs protection, even if she's too weak to be a danger to anyone.

Hyou drops out of the sky and scares Karin out of her skin. Whilst 10th squad watches in admiration, H and H argue over whether Hollows can really have zanpakuto or shinigami can really have Hollows. Hyou insists they are dichotomies that can't share the same space. Karin learns that zanpakuto are not just flashy swords but living things, leaving in a huff when Hyourinmaru implies she never had one, since that makes **her** Ichigo's murderer instead of **Naraku**.

_*This is because when dead souls go through the long dark tunnel, it's not a thing of time or space and tends to spit them out anywhen. As a reference, remember how Ichigo and crew magically got extra days to rescue Rukia on their first visit, and how the inhabitants of Rukongai tend to be mixed up from all kinds of different times, AND how Isshin trained Ichigo against Aizen in the senkai gate time warp! Equally, people might get reborn into any era. It's probably why hardly anyone can find their relatives in Rukongai. I did give it a loophole where a soul burial done IN Soul Society sends the person straight back to where they were, as with Karin and Hallibel's sublimation._

_In addition, a zanpakuto bonds to only one human soul, meaning the only way for the taboo of two people having the same sword (why Central 46 executed Kusaka) to occur is for continuity to fuck up and put them in the same time zone._

_Explaining these fiddly things is most of why HB takes so damn long to write. Anyway, on we go!_

**o)0(o**

**Ch36: Crouching Dragon, Hidden Shadows**

Toushiro catches up to Karin and they argue over her sordid past and what killed Ichigo. When convincing her she's still a liability, if Aizen can find a way to imitate her 'Naraku' unstoppable-inter- dimensional-rip-swords ...she can't hear him say the name 'Naraku'.

Signifying it's a genuine zanpakuto spirit whose bond with her is currently blocked. (Like Zangetsu's 'Listen to my name, Ichigo! - £I%#& !?)

Meanwhile Orihime and Tatsuki are plotting an escape from the city, as Orihime fears to make Ichigo more crazy; Tatsuki is understandably creeped out by this revelation of the cry baby's psychotic split personality. Tatsuki promises to kick Hichigo in the head if they meet, Inoue prefers her to run the fuck away.

Karin doesn't want protection if it means people get hurt, this makes chibi-taicho le sad...

Toushiro meets with Ichigo, Karin eavesdrops. Ichigo lets slip that the Hollow has been escaping and Mr T attempts to arrest him. Hichigo does another runner and nearly attacks Karin in the corridor.

After that narrow escape, Toushiro drags Karin to the dragon and clunks their heads together till they stop being idiots and play nice.

Hitsugaya tells Karin his sob story, she hugs him; he's mortified. They go flying for so-called rescue practice (aka Hyourinmaru has more of an inner child than Toushiro does). 10th Squad's kitty for the ToRin bets gets ever bigger.

Hyou sinks the Titanic in the omake.

**o)0(o**

**Ch37: A Many-Splendored Battlefield**

_This bizarre title is a twist on the Moulin Rouge line: __"Love is like oxygen - love is a many splendored thing - love lifts us up where we belong! All you need is love!"  
Hichigo loves romance musicals, yep._

Ichigo knocks on Tatsuki's door, trying to find Orihime. Tatsuki stalls him, eventually admitting Orihime has fled the city. Ichigo is pleased, until he explains that even after the war Orihime won't be safe around him. Hichigo flips out, smashes the table, gets the truth from Tatsuki and promises not to eat her till he's back. He turns, she kicks him in the head as promised, and shuts Ichigo's unconscious human body in the elevator. Isshin adds her to the small girls who have beaten Ichigo hall of fame, incl. Ururu, Karin, Hiyori etc.

The Hollow escapes Ichigo's body and chases Orihime's gold spirit threads. Catches up, swapping personas all over the shop.

Ichigo tries to apologise and let her escape but his Hollow returns with a vengeance; traps her in whirlpool of swirly doom and tells her it's worse to be a half-Hollow than a real one. He has less than nothing, despite knowing more about their IchiHime past than either of them, sob sob. He wants her to care but also to reject him, to live but be eaten. She decides to create an Arrancars Anonymous support group, and attempts to accept him as doing so helped her brother Sora, and subsequently dies due to Hichigo's lack of self-control.

Ichigo and Hichigo fight internally over who is going to face the corpse, take the blame, and suddenly neither wants to be king. Hichigo flees and Zangetsu tries to slap Ichigo out of despair. Ichigo realises Hichigo has eaten too much of him and he's becoming the Hollow.

A raging storm kicks up in his soul city and he begs Zangetsu to kill him before he kills the rest of his friends, before sinking into the sea of rainwater.

Zangetsu is left alone in a breaking soul, hesitating.

Hypocrite.

**o)0(o**

**Ch38: Heartless Beat**

Orihime wakes up, realises she's genuinely dead this time and sets about rejecting her own death like a boss. However when Zan-chan materialises to try and take over Ichigo himself, either fix him or fight the winter war in his stead; Orihime mistakes him for a reaper-reaper. Tsubaki fanboys and the sword is asked to tell Ichigo that Orihime is ok.

Upon returning, Zangetsu discovers Ichigo and Hichigo have fused, promising to kill each other in one voice, a hollow hole beating open and shut like a heart in the bleached berry's chest. The zanpakuto spirit resolves to stop his insanity.

_The next part is complicated due to being one of those points where a lot of my Bleach philosophies intersect:_

Ichigo is struggling to be even two people at once since a Hollow is not usually a parasite in competition with its own soul. Plus all the Soul Awakening syndrome is now pulling him in a million different directions, which had previously been shielded by the Hollow devouring the preincarnations and memories.

Sword berates him and goes in for the kill.

Ichigo suddenly catches the sword and realises that all the different souls don't have a claim anymore, they lost it when they died.

So he stops fighting because he can't win, nothing lasts forever. And he'll just let the past go since Orihime _might_return.

_**Blow by Blow:**_

When people die, they either move on or devolve into Hollows. Becoming one depends on your attitude, basically. If you cling to your losses you lose everything you are.

Ichigo never chose to be a Hollow, but the fact they are now fused means if one accepts things and moves on, they both must. And Hichigo doesn't want to be a Hollow after destroying the one thing he ever was accepted by, so he won't fight to be King anymore.

Once they stabilise Hichigo continues to filter the past lives, Ichigo continues to be mostly sane, on the condition that **not all is lost**, i.e. Orihime comes back in another lifetime as she has already.

She's a total emotional crutch, if she ever dies again the two Ichigos will probably go batshit insane, despite saying they're at peace with it.

This is not a proper fix for Soul Awakening but it's the best he'll ever get.

_**And back to the plot:**_

Ichigo crumples Zangetu's sword, who is less than impressed, and they wonder if there's no cure for Ichigo's crazy fubar soul. Zangetsu tells him to try again, and learn how to only move forward.

-o-o-

Ichigo wakes up on a train next to his victim, who is industriously scribbling away in a notebook. He tells her off for not being dead. She tells him off for shouting in a quiet zone. It transpires that healing a few holes in her brain was far easier than resurrecting Ichigo from a ball of fluff, and Orihime's powers to reject fate have eroded her survival instincts i.e. not fleeing a twisted murderer. Ichigo admits that he would use such powers to bring back his mother, but Inoue notes that long-dead people have no place in society to come back to. Stupid government records.

They stroll home hand in hand, discussing the thrilling life of raindrops and Inoue's verse _If I were the rain that connects the earth and sky, whom in all eternity will never mingle; would I be able to bind two hearts together?_

Accidentally entering the house in _flagrante delicto_, Isshin and Yuzu pounce mercilessly, declaring them to have fallen in smex. Ichigo denies this and insists they only intend to do homework, throwing Inoue's notebook at his dad, who then reads out the 57-item long list of confession tactics. They eventually settle on the 5 lives, 1 love approach, and Ichigo feels healed of all his preincarnations' losses since one of them came back. They lean in for the kiss, but Isshin and Yuzu, witnesses A and B, must first be killed.

Retreating to his room, Ichigo reminds her it's crazy to go out with one's tormentor, and she reminds him that she's pretty damn crazy anyway. They finally get to snog, until Rukia leaps out of the cupboard and demands they find their own room. Ichigo offers to toss her out the window, and Isshin (listening at the door with Yuzu) offers his double bed. Bloodshed ensues.

**o)0(o**

**Ch39: Retrograde**

Chasing up IchiHime with RenjiRuki, HB has suddenly become Love Actually with dead people. We shall call it Dead Actually.

There's a quick overview of Renji and Rukia's street-rat childhood, their first weeks of severe truancy and much stealing of food at the Shinigami Academy, and their first meeting with their 'mentors' Kira Izuru and Hinamori Momo. Kira is horrified that they can't read and took months to master kido control he was taught in an hour. They punch his lights out because they were never _taught_. Just before they quit their new careers, Momo bribes them to stay with tasty cakes.

The four become great friends and advance through the ranks of the Gotei 13/cheat and get adopted by Kuchikis. When Renji outranks Kira he decides life just isn't fair. Rukia struggles to come to terms with her adoption since she never knew about Hisana till after Aizen tried to execute her, and assumes Byakuya is seeking to groom a look-a-like into a new Hisana. Since Renji and Rukia were never separated before, they don't know how to deal with it and drift apart until the Soukyoku's imminent fiery doom reminds them who they really are.

In the present, Renji is wooing Rukia with nostalgia in the Red Dog District, and she's protesting that all the couples she's ever heard of end up dead. True Fact. They get into a raging argument that magically becomes fluff, under the condition that Byakuya never finds out.

Sick and tired of romance, Grimmjaw invades Rukongai and proceeds to beat them up. He has great fun smashing shit up. Including breaking Zabimaru, flattening their childhood home, rerouting the river and destroying half the shanty town. Rukia responds with a new 'sleeve of snow' attack, freezing and shattering Big G's arm. Grimm throws a Gran Ray Cero at them, and Renji just barely blocks it by materialising Zabimaru's entire zanpakuto spirit just for a few seconds, who squashes Grimmy under a mighty paw.

**o)0(o**

**Ch40: Winter War**

Isane and Kano, yet _another_ couple, arrive as reinforcements. Isane begins to heal the wounded and summons a localised hailstorm with her bankai, to prevent the approach of Grimmjaw.

Ashido and Jeagerjacques argue about pride, honour and cowardice. They engage in epic battle. Meanwhile Ulquiorra invades Seireitei in a cloud of woe. Yumichika and Hanataro are the first to see him. Thankfully, they are not a couple. Not wanting to get Hana germs on his sword, Schiffer experiments with killing them purely with reiatsu. Hana takes stamina pills (not duds this time, and what DOES 4th use them for?)

Ulquiorra goes super-emo-saiyan, and Yumi prefers to use his shikai than die without a real fight, sapping the Quatro's energy. He attempts to use it but has a fit of depression and a fashion crisis inflicted by the miserable reiatsu. Hana remains unaffected.

Ulquirra grows impatient and flicks a Lanza de la Luna shard at Yumichika.

-o-o-

Starrk enters Soul Society, planning to nap, but Kenpachi pops up out of nowhere and hammers him into the very distant ground.

Grimmy and Kano are still enjoying their fight, Grimm breaks away and almost kills Isane, Kira hooks him round the neck with Wabisuke and makes him 256 x heavier. Yo' panther so fat!

Grimmjaw elbow-darts him out the way and threatens Isane again who prepares to fight close combat, until Ashido stabs him in the back for messing with his chick. Then the lost-and-found shinigami sets off his bankai and Jeagerjacques dies horribly in a twinkly fireworks display.

Kano and Isane have a Moment, then get back to work dealing with the pancake formerly known as the Red Dog District.

Renji blearily asks whether he killed the Espada, and Rukia says 'Yes yes, of course dear… No.'

**o)0(o**

**Ch41: Fractured Lives**

Yumichika is dying on the floor. To add insult to injury, Hanataro then stabs him too. Hisagomaru drinks up all the pain and heals Yumi, however Ulqui has got bored and is leaving. Hanataro makes a last ditch, desperate, flaily attempt to stop him that Ulqui doesn't even bother to block. HOWEVER when Hisagomaru touches Ulqui's Hollow hole, literally a massive reservoir of pain, it slurps a load of it up and becomes the apparently useless scalpel form. The scalpel cuts much deeper into Espada 4's soul, and allllll his mighty angst is devoured. Ulquiorra actually panics at this and rips Hana's arm off.

Hanataro faints, as anyone would, and hides in his inner world, wherein Hisagomaru is all 'Dude. Dude. Bankai. Dude you gotta see this. Wake up and stab that sucker with the Syringe-zooka! Dude!' Hana obeys, in terrible agony, and a WOOSH of red medicine fountains out. He faints again. Ulquiorra is still panicking because the worst possible thing for an emo is occurring. He's being healed. Shock horror!

Once Ulqui has become harmless **Vasto Pet #1**, Yumichika vehemently denies that _Hanataro_ has just bankai'd before he ever could, and his sword Kujaku tartly explains that in times of war, freak occurrences happen because the zanpakuto spirits will take the toll of materialising upon themselves for the sake of saving peeps.

-o-o-

Zaraki and Starrk banter, argue, start to fight, Ken-chan is whupped, sits up happier, whupped harder, (Omigawd, You Killed Kenny!); and they finally start to fight in earnest. Starrk and Lilynette fuse into their Los Lobos form. Yachiru seems delighted this is possible. They fight until Zaraki is surrounding by suicide bomber wolves, an average day really, and when the whole pack blows up in his face he shields Yachiru with his body.

Yachiru sits up, pissed, and borrows his zanpakuto. She wheedles at him until he lets her fight, saying 'Butcher him for me, Yachiru!' at which point she turns into a GIANT FLAMING CHAINSAW. Honestly. A completely average day.

**o)0(o**

**Ch42: Checkmate**

_Fightfightfight, fightfightfight! The Coyote, and Ken-chan shoooooow!_

Coyote and Lilynette make up a new attack on the spur of the moment to counter Zaraki and Yachiru's shikai of bossness. They fuse completely, and strangely enough become the complete opposite of their lonely, laissez-faire personalities, turning back into the world-hating lone wolf they were before they split. Coyote tries to eat Zaraki, and Ken uses Gamma Akutabi to gouge a hole all the way through Starrk.

Starrk explodes, Yachiru-sword falls a mile or two underground, and the Shrine gets knocked slanty. Zaraki faints, and Yachiru makes the 'omega wolf' last remnant of Starrk and Lilynette's soul into her pet. **Vasto Pet #2**.

-o-o-

At HQ, lots of cool captains are watching Barragan and Hallibel approach and grilling Karin on their abilities. Karin flashbacks to her death and panics about how Barragan can create Hollows with his King's Burial twist on Konsou. Soi Fon, Byakuya, Toushiro and Yamamoto head out to be the A Team. Juushiro wonders how Karin knows so much about the enemy's fighting styles – the answer to which is obviously Gin's Arrancar Encyclopaedia lectures. Karin starts wishing she could fight again.

Nel and Shunsui chat over sake. Neliel Tu Oderschvank is not yet at Vasto Lorde levels, but nevertheless she is **Vasto Pet #3.**

Byakuya and Barragan have a snob-off, followed by Yamamoto dissing King Barry, followed by Barry pwning him with time-mist. Barragan claims that he was the one to turn Hueco Mundo to sand and that all of Soul Society has only ever been his plaything.

**o)0(o**

**Ch43: Indomitus**

Barragan rots everything including Senbonzakura and Soi Fon's mega death ray, then the Soutaicho is all 'sup bitches I'm immortal'. Now, I'm not sure if I intended this as his bankai, but his canon bankai is so freaking cool we'll go with that, and say it's just some crazy 'cannot die' status effect of Ryuujin Jakka, the phoenix zanpakuto.

Yamamoto challenges Barragan that the city he raised can defeat the king who razed cities.

Barragan offers to make Toushiro look a bit older which clearly was the wrong thing to say, because Barragan is suddenly an ice cube.

Then Hallibel steals the water and starts to beat on Yamamoto, calling shinigamis an evil sacrificial cult and how she wants to save Hueco Mundo. Everyone watches them fight. Although Yama-jii is impressed by her philosophies, he burns her to a crisp in an inescapable Matryoshka attack.

The Three Taichosketeers team up to bring down the Secunda Espada, who ignores them and attacks the sky instead after Toushiro taunts him that it can't be aged or destroyed. Barragan is all _'Adamastor is my forever rival, BOOM take that sky!'_ and there's no water left for Toushiro to fight with.

Soi Fon distracts Barragan with the dramatic death of a subordinate long enough for Byakuya to cast a dangerous archaic 'hollow chant' kido that mimics caja negacion. Soutaicho says he'll take over from here, but Hallibel pops out of a garganta and stabs him in the back. Yama-jii somehow convinces her to submit to konsou and promises to make her an amazing shinigami who will never have to sacrifice her comrades.

As Barragan breaks out of the caja, Tia Hallibel unleashes a monsoon attack that gives Toushiro enough water to turn Barragan into a giant snowflake.

Soi Fon has been infected with oldness and Byakuya chops her arm off with his Last Sight sword. And they say romance is dead!

She blows up King Snowflake with Jyakuho. As Barragan is swallowed by Hell, he calls Yamamoto a child (Yama-jii insists he has never been a child) and says Hueco Mundo will never die, because a king is not the earth and sky (hello again, Adamastor!).

Hallibel submits to konsou, the first time a shinigami has attempted it on a Hollow (stealing ideas from Barragan) and is reborn a plus soul. **Vasto Pet #4**

The gatekeeper of Hell waves at Karin. For the sake of completeness, let's call her **Vasto Pet #5!**

Shakespearean Bleach omakes. = OUT DAMNED PLOT HOLE, OUT I SAY!

**o)0(o**

**Ch44: Fray**

The ryoka gang are feeding Morff the Hollow Gecko treats. Isshin arrives to announce the Espada Invasion and skips off with Ichigo on their first Father-Son Bonding Hollow Hunt. Ichigo manages to smash Mitsubishi's house (Cult of Prometheus leader from Arc 2) just by drawing his sword, and slinks back home in shame.

Meanwhile, trippy shit is killing everyone in the shopping mall. Komamura and Ikkaku arrive to sort things out, and both go bankai at Zommari Leroux, Septima Espada. Zommari takes control of Komamura's giant samurai bankai and goes all Godzilla on Karakura. Ikkaku and Saijin turn on each other.

Unohana and Kurotsuchi are dissecting Szayel Apollo. He didn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of beating them.

Uryuu is telling Ichigo off for not fighting despite his total loss of self-control, to which Ichigo replies that it's not fair that Ishida can quit Quincying because he _nearly_ killed Inoue and Chad; but when Hichigo genuinely did kill Inoue, he's still expected to keep fighting. Also addressing Inoue's antirape of Chad's Hollow powers. Ishida gets in a huff and goes to fight.

Just as Madarame is nibbling his own hands off, Uryuu arrives to save the day! He is a credit to the Handicrafts Club when he stitches everyone up like puppet strings, and becomes the first Quincy ever to wield a bankai. Zommari's resurreccion has had a wardrobe change for the sake of our sanity, and Uryuu gets high on the Septima's hallucinogenic Ayahuasca attack.

Isshin calls in reinforcements to start soul burials on the collaterally dead citizens, and treats Komamura, Ishida, and Ikkaku. Nemu arrives to help.

Leroux has dominion over one of Isshin's hands and is trying to strangle him with it. Isshin fights with Engetsu, not a silly Zangetsu rip off, but a super insane invisible shapeshifting BOSS zanpakuto. Even Ichigo is impressed. Leroux can't control it because he can't see it.

Uryuu and Nemu fall in biochemical reaction.

Leroux makes Isshin think Engetsu is visible and skip off deliriously happy. Ichigo steps up to the plate and Zommari takes control of him too, telling him to kill Isshin. Hichigo happily agrees, and Ishida Ryuuken who's been spying on Uryuu all along tries to shoot all three of them with a megadeath arrow.

Hichigo catches it, since he's a creeper, and Zommari uses all his power to stop Ichigo from resisting – which also means Ichigo stops restraining _himself_… and blows them both up.

Later, Isshin reveals that both he and Ryuuken delivered each other's children, and Ichigo and Uryuu wisely swear never to speak of that fact again.

Aizen is chillin', probably in his spinny chair of doom, and doesn't seem to mind that all his soldiers are dead at all.

ENTER YAMMYYY!

**o)0(o**

**Ch45: Split Peach**

Karin gets a pet butterfly. Ukitake coughs up a lung. Momo comes to help, and on her way out gets red herring'd by Aizen.

Aizen convinces Momo that the entire rebellion has been a set up, and he was manipulated by his zanpakuto all along. Because Kyouka is a mirror capable of imitating any level of power used against him, the only one who can defeat him is someone limitless, i.e. a god. Momo agrees to bring him the King's Key.

Ukitake goes to fight Yammy in Karakura, everyone is expecting this fight to be the simplest, and Karin sneaks after him.

Karin and Yammy have a war of insults. Ichigo whisks her home and she reveals that her pet butterfly has been teaching her evil, evil things and leading her astray.

Yamamoto summons the Five Noble Clans, and Momo challenges him that if he's not stronger than the Spirit King, he cannot defeat Aizen.

Yammy begins his gonzui, Juushiro attempts to interrupt, and tries to collect Yammy's Ceros in his zanpakuto to reduce the effort of summoning his bankai. Cough. Die.

That's when Yammy gets angry. And you won't like him when he's angry.

Be Enraged, Ira! HULK SMASSSSHHHHH!

**o)0(o**

**Ch46: Skyfall**

Yammy is big. Really big. Tactless people might say _obese_. His Ceros are now too powerful for Juushiro to reflect and his shikai is melted. Ukitake summons his bankai, coz he too bamf to care if his swords broke.

Sougyo no Michishio (Flow of Pisces), nicknamed Fishbowl, is a huuuuge whirlpool that surrounds the enemy, absorbs their attacks and fires them back bigger – when UJ isn't sick. Which is never. He controls it by manifesting the zanpakuto spirits, two cute fish. Karin dubs him Captain Koi Carp.

Ichigo arrives to help, and isn't much help, since Yammy gets stronger with every passing second. Yammy drinks up the bankai, the nearby souls, and all the reiatsu soup Ichigo threw at him, and sends his compliments to the chef. Ukitake falls over, he is a bit of a pansy.

Karin is still a tad schizophrenic. Yuzu, god knows why, is the first to realise Yammy's strength comes from rage not from eating.

After dragging Ukitake to the clinic, Ichigo fights Yammy some more, who calls him puny and splats him. Ichigo staggers back home and is also a tad schizophrenic. Whilst healing everyone, Orihime has to deflect more attacks from Riyalgo, and unlocks her (renamed) canon power – Shiten Zanshen get! Then she gets overambitious and tries to trap Yammy inside her shield. He likes that idea as much as Pikachu likes pokéballs.

People begin to panic and Karin gets very enraged over her helplessness, convinced she could pwn Yammy if she was still Tenebra Shirojos. She demands her stalker butterfly tell her its name, _oooo_.

Meanwhile, Urahara has arrived and uses his genius intellect to make Riyalgo understand that Aizen is just using him as a catalyst to create the King's Key. Kisuke chops off his hand and convinces him to attack Aizen instead, and Ichigo helps him aim.

-o-o-

Aizen Tousen and Wonderweissen are chillaxing by the roof pool of a luxury hotel. They discuss philosophy and economics in Rukongai. Hinamori joins them and frets over Aizen's true identity. The Soutaicho arrives and before they can start another taunt war Yammy smashes the roof in.

Momo sends kido along a spirit thread to reveal Sousuke's true location, and it seems that he's been framed by Kyouka Suigetsu all along. Even Tousen is surprised by his chains. Urahara goes to kill him but is caught by Yammy.

Yamamoto interrogates the Real Slim Sousuke, who reveals that Kyouka Suigetsu has manipulated him all along and wants the zanpakuto spirits to be free from their slavery under the shinigami, and that no one but the Spirit King can overpower his sword's ability to mirror anything. He looks so pathetic that Yamamoto believes him. The Five Noble Clans arrive, fashionably late.

-o-o-

Choujiro, Byakuya, Rukia, Kyoraku, Nel, Yoruichi and Kuukaku join the party. Eeeeverybody argues, until Aizen tells Kyouka Suigetsu that he'll be given nothing unless he proves his power. So Kyouka throws Yammy across Karakura with a single flick of his finger.

After that, all his opponents back down pretty damn quick. Yamamoto commands the Clan Leaders to fetch the key, which requires all their specialist powers in kido, flash step, zanjutsu and ass kicking. Shunsui reveals that he was a genius of Drunken Fist kung fu until his alcohol tolerance got too high.

The real, nice Aizen looks very traumatised by the mess his zanpakuto made of the world, until he is given the Key, at which point he lets his true colours shine through – he's an evil bastard.

Yammy and Urahara are dropped through a mega-Garganta into Hueco Mundo, Aizen mocks that he told Momo some of the truth but it didn't help her at all, and opens the King's Gate. It's very sparkly. Then he tells Wonderwice to jump in, to prove that it's the genuine article. Margera dies because heartless beings cannot enter the King's Realm, which just goes to show that Aizen never intended to help the Hollows at all.

Sousuke goads the Soutaicho to use bankai and kill him now, only a million people would die, small price to pay right? When Genryuusai refuses, Aizen tells him that the next time they meet he will be god, and everyone will rejoice that the heavens are no longer empty.

He ascends into the Realm of Sparkles.

-o-o-

Back in Hueco Mundo: Yammy keeps growing until he can flatten the entire palace of Las Noches under one foot. And then, he makes such a racket than he wakes up…

The Sky Hollow.

Adamastor, to whom the moon is just a pin to hold the night sky on his shoulders, tells Yammy that no matter how much he devours he will never be sated, and there is no hope for Hollows or Arrancars even if they swallow the world and live forever. Then he eats him like a peanut.

Urahara shits bricks.

When Adamastor looks around for any other snacks to nom, Benihime materialises and mocks Kisuke's fear. Urahara begs her to give him bankai, which shock horror, he never once achieved before, mainly because Benihime despises him.

Benihime refuses, since she prefers Adamastor who's got that noble tragic suffering thing going on, to Urahara who is essentially a narcissistic scientist without morals like Aizen.

Finally Kisuke stops playing nice and reveals that he sussed out her bankai command without needing to be told it, tells her to bleed, and chops off her head.

This triggers the spirit-matter equivalent of a nuclear bomb, pretty much why she never told him her bankai in case the genius was stupid enough to use it.

Since he will also be caught in the blast…

-o-o-

Yoruichi zooms through a Garganta opened by Nel to rescue Urahara, moving so fast time seems to stop, just ahead of the blast zone. Behind them the desert melts, the sky falls down, a white sun that had been hidden all along begins to blaze, all surviving Hollows flee in a panic, and Adamastor is surprised to discover a little scratch on his mask.

-o-o-

In the omakes, Adamastor (biggest damn Hollow in the history of ever) and Morff (tiniest and possibly strongest Hollow) continue their lifelong game of cat and mouse; and the entirety of Bleach is just an illusion cast by Aizen for an April Fool's joke.

**o)0(o**

**THE END! FINALLY!**

Thanks for everyone's continued support over three years, three arcs, 47 chapters, oodles of plot twists, umpteensquillion words and 444 reviews! (Keep 'em coming!)

Special thanks to Dan-chan, my muse/beta reader, and Child of the Ashes, my…fan club? Hehe.

Let us all pray the last arc is quicker. ONWARDS, MEN!

I'd also like to hear your opinions, as an anonymous reviewer asked _'Where are you from, my good sir/madam?'_

Well I'm from England, currently studying in China, but do I come across as a Sir or a Madam? Which character in HB might I be most similar too? Have a guess, haha. xD

And last of all I want to plug my epic Bleach AMV again, plug plug plug:

**httpcolonslashslash tinyurl dotcomslash c97sq74**

****FFN's formatting restrictions do my head in.

_Alliriyan~*_


	48. Interbellum

**Hell Butterfly**

**Interbellum**

**~48~**

**o)0(o**

Unohana Retsu pulled off her blue surgical gloves, disposed of them in a sealed container, tugged off her mask and started washing her hands and arms thoroughly. Across the room Kurotsuchi was doing similar, but with acid. He claimed to have given himself reinforced skin. She'd questioned his use of face paint, then. Her heavy braid of long black hair had been plaited down her back instead of the front, to stop it dangling into opened abdomens and to signal all members of her squad that she was in surgery and not to be disturbed.

"My new favourite," smirked Mayuri in that lipless way he had. "Espada are durable. A complete deconstruction without anaesthetic and never squeaked! It saves me suffering the dolorous male scream."

"He was paralytic," Retsu reminded the evil scientist; "and you replaced your ears with bio weapons. Tell me, has the word 'sympathy' ever limped across your vocabulary?"

"I can be sympathetic," sniffed the Venetian masquerade reject. He was gloating over the array of embalming jars they had recently filled. "I offered that ryoka girl excellent terms once: eight daily injections, clothes, no lethal surgery. I was even going to let her _sleep_. She should have taken it whilst she still could, since I won't be so generous the next time she falls into my grasp. A seven-in-one test subject! Who could resist?"

Unohana dried her hands, fixed him with a polite smile that promised torments the likes of which all of his test subjects combined could not even conceive of, and opened the door of the operating theatre to exit. "Please bear in mind that Inoue Orihime will be under _my_ division the very instant she dies, if she would only refrain from resurrecting herself next time. I anticipate that she would make an excellent lieutenant, and barely more scatty than Isane was."

Faced with such feather light wrath, Mayuri did not dissent.

As she walked into the corridor, her Third Seat Iemura was waiting for her.

"Shouldn't you be out saving lives?" she rebuked him gently. "The waiting rooms are only for those without duties to perform."

"U-U-Unohana-taicho!" squawked Yasochika, combing back his blond hair with shaking fingers. He'd clearly been panicking all the time that red, Do Not Enter sign had been lit. "It's urgent! There's been a disastrous Espada attack on Karakura Town, and Aizen has breached the King's Realm!"

Retsu's aura became disgruntled, and her kind blue eyes thinned ever so slightly. "When there is an _emergency_, you are meant to _interrupt_."

Iemura stuttered. No one liked seeing the Fourth Captain angry, least of all her immediate next-in-command. "B-but Unohana-taicho, we _never_ disturb you during surgery. Kurotsuchi-taicho said specifically not to…" Most wounds and illnesses could be tackled with kido, for surgery to actually be necessary was rare, and his leader's operating theatre was considered almost sacred space.

"Please be so good as to take a closer look, Third Seat-san." She ushered him gently, irresistibly through the swing doors. "Does this look like life-saving to you? I was aiding a cretin whom I do not respect, in disposing of a worthless piece of bio-waste. When we have non-urgent information, we continue with our tasks until the appropriate time; when we have urgent messages, _we do not wait._ Even if I had been in genuine surgery, this is a question of _priorities_, Iemura-san."

Yasochika blinked at what seemed to be an exploded diagram of a humanoid body, no, he looked closer queasily, a _quarter_ of an exploded diagram; there were too many organs and bones and an eyeball missing to be a whole person… when he realised the butchered meat was still _alive_, he tugged off his glasses to blur the disturbing sight, since his captain was blocking the exit. He watched Kurotsuchi-taicho cluck his tongue, activate his shikai and turn the remnants into a strange green liquid with a single stab, shooing the slime into a large glass jar with a wave of his ugly pitchfork sword.

"I did tell him not to enter under any circumstances," sneered Mayuri. "Since having your help is a once-in-a-lifetime bonus."

"Then the rampant obliteration of a human city falls on your shoulders, Twelfth Captain." Her voice remained low, but shook with anger. Iemura had never seen her rage so explicitly before, and inched away.

"More corpses to examine," shrugged the former high-security prisoner of the Maggots Nest detention facility. "Real world populations are too dense as it is, especially in Japan. The Balance of Souls won't mind a little cull."

"Report to Kurotsuchi-san, Iemura-san," ordered the surgeon; "since you think his words outweigh both my own and common sense."

"Ah… The…Decima Espada, who everyone thought would be the easiest arrancar to dispose of, became the Cero Espada and used his uh, uh, 'gonzui' technique to ingest an estimated nine thousand Plus souls… also defeating Ukitake-taicho, Substitute Kurosaki and exile Urahara…"

Mayuri nodded carelessly, he'd already analysed and submitted reports on Yammy's gonzui, and he had no awe of the others mentioned.

"After which Aizen, or possibly his zanpakuto, negotiated with the Commander-General for the Ouken, in return for not using one hundred thousand souls to create his own key." Yasochika was truly shaking now. "And after demonstrating that he can match any level of power used against him without effort, he… he dropped the Cero Espada and the exile Urahara into a Garganta, and walked into the King's Realm even after Soutaicho-sama set him on fire…um. Sir."

The twisted genius whistled, impressed at their enemy's devious strength. Retsu was not.

"All preventable," she snapped.

"By you?" scoffed Kurotsuchi, his black and white face jeering. "Your division isn't even allowed in the living world. Would you have given him an aspirin and tucked him up in a trolley bed? Saline solution?"

"I would have nullified the Cero Espada, and denied Aizen Sousuke his leverage. As it stands, this means the Soutaicho is in Karakura, and Ukitake whom he left in charge is incapacitated. Command of Seireitei defaults to me." She raised her head and spoke in a tone that brooked no argument.

Mayuri grimaced. He was always grimacing, as if the world in general left a bad taste in his mouth.

"The first thing you will do is drop the exile nets preventing several powerful allies entering Soul Society, since the first war is already lost. Your second directive is to open a large, stable senkai to Karakura to retrieve all fighters, and keep the Cleaner away from it. Also inform…" She listened to silence for a second, measuring the sizes and types and locations of reiatsu across the city; "Hitsugaya-taicho to gather the prisoners of war and guard them at the First Division until the Soutaicho's return."

He affected not to have heard her.

"If you are indisposed, I will delegate these simple requests to Akon-san."

Kurotsuchi spat, screwed a lid onto his jar of Szayel Apollo, and started stacking the rest onto a trolley. "I'm the only capable person in my Division, and the rest are stupider than the bombs I planted in them. Akon particularly. And when these three-second tasks are completed, I sit and twiddle my thumbs?"

"After that you will conduct a sweeping scan of Hueco Mundo. The Hollows have just lost their pecking order. We need to anticipate their reactions."

The man pulled out his soul phone with a roll of sarcastic golden eyes. "Let me patch though the sensors I left there last time…" He shook the flip-phone, turned it over, took the battery out, hammered it against the tray of surgical instruments a few times and tried again. "Hng. They're dead."

Retsu gave him a polite look that said only _'capable?'_

"I designed them to withstand temperatures and pressures ten times that of the largest Cero on record! They're indestructible!"

Unohana turned away, knowing he would report as soon as he had results, and swept out of the theatre with Iemura sucked along in her wake. "Iemura-san, you will find Isane-san and ask if she'd be so kind as to commence triage of the survivors in Rukongai, although I suspect she has already begun. Assign the Third Medical Relief team to aid her division, Fifth Squad hasn't had the time to become effective yet. Tell the Second and Fourth teams to go to Karakura and commence Soul Burials and helping any living humans that can be saved. They will travel in groups of four containing two fighters from Fifth Division each as defence, who are also to treat the exercise as rudimentary paramedic training. The real world ban is temporarily lifted. They are not to attempt shopping, any who do will be reassigned to Eleventh Squad where they will no doubt be bullied mercilessly. All other teams are to remain in the hospital to deal with incoming patients, except the Sixth team who will respond to emergency call outs as usual. When that is completed you will find Yamada Hanataro, pass on my congratulations on his innovative victory and wishes for a speedy recovery, and formally explain that your positions are now reversed."

"U-Unohana-taicho?" quavered Iemura, he'd remembered everything perfectly but not quite heard the last sentence properly.

She continued to glide away, long braid bobbing behind her. "I may not care who joins Fourth Division, but I will not have a man with no understanding of basic triage as its de facto second-in-command. And he deserves a little recognition for defeating an Espada almost single-handed, does he not?"

"Well, he's certainly single-handed now," dictated Yasochika into his diary, scribbling as he ran; "and he doesn't have the confidence to be Third Seat! Taicho will no doubt reverse her decision later…"

"His brother Seinosuke was my vice-captain before Isane, and healing zanpakuto are rare. Even you don't have one, Seventh Seat-san. I also want all the worst-wounded officers who made direct contact with the enemy relocated to the HQ council hall. Now, please, obey _faster_."

She conjured a senkai gate and exited the afterlife without breaking her stride.

**o)0(o**

"Kisuke," shouted Yoruichi, shaking him fiercely; trying not to contemplate whether the red tears streaking down his face were the mark of an internal injury. Bloodstains clashed with his green clothes, for all they matched Benihime so well. Probably she should put him down, gently, but she was too scared. "Kisuke! Look at me! What's wrong with you?"

His eyes were fixed on something far away in another dimension, tinted pink. "Did you see it?" he croaked, and she let him slide to the ground.

"I'm not sure what I saw. I didn't take time to look, I didn't expect to have a _bomb_ behind me! Kisuke, I thought you never had bankai. I _know_ you didn't. Did you kill Yammy, or was that him exploding because he ate too much?"

The Soutaicho had arrived beside them, on the roof of the wrecked hotel where Neliel had opened a Garganta for the Shihouin to collect her friend. He listened with slight surprise and a grumble of long-delayed realisation to the truth that one of his former captains had never achieved bankai. And he was shaken to his core by what the fraudulent exile said next.

"_Yammy? !_ No! No I didn't even try to kill him. What use is shikai against that? He was flattening Las Noches under one _foot_ by the end!"

Yoruichi crouched beside him, hands supporting his heaving shoulders. She had never seen him so terrified. He was the one who held back, skulked on the sidelines until a well-timed nudge would bring the whole situation tumbling down like a house of cards. Now he was laughing, weak and hysterical. "Neither, Yoruichi-san. He was eaten like a peanut by a beast the likes of which none have never seen. Then I killed _that_ one. And Benihime too, I guess."

Yamamoto's staff brushed Yoruichi aside and the point of it hovered just before Urahara's bleeding eyes, unnerving him into leaning back until he was almost flat on the floor. It was an intimidation technique he liked to use himself, and had to admit was quite effective now that he was on the receiving end.

"Ah, Yama-san… Did you know there was a Hollow the size of the stratosphere?" asked the scientist with feeble humour. The staff rapped on his forehead in admonition.

"I know of Adamastor," growled Genryuusai, foreboding. The awakening of the Hollow Emperor only proved how severe the scale of the Winter War truly was. Even if the war lasted less than a day, even if Adamastor moved only for a scant few minutes. "You had best pray you _haven't_ killed him."

"You KNEW?" exploded Urahara, knocking the staff away and leaping up to grab the commander by the scruff of his beard. "You _knew_ and you didn't _tell_ us? You _let that thing exist?_ How can you sleep at night? How long have you known it was there? We need to destroy it!"

The Soutaicho was unperturbed; he did not even take offence at the exile's manhandling. "I've known of Adamastor for many times longer than you have breathed. He cannot leave Hueco Mundo. And he is more necessary than all of Seireitei for keeping the Hollows away from the living and the dead."

Kisuke threw his hands into the air in disbelief. "You're as bad as Benihime! 'Pay your dues'? How does everyone except me _know_ about these things?"

"Now now, is this just about your intellectual supremacy, Kiss-Kiss?" asked Yoruichi, halfway between mocking and scared for his mental state. Almost fearing something she hadn't seen. She patted his back and dragged him away from the old man, wondering if she would have faltered, had she looked up in Hueco Mundo. A single hesitation and the blast would have killed them both.

A senkai gate glided open and Unohana Retsu swept out, taking in the situation in a single glance and then pinning furious blue eyes on the Soutaicho.

"Where were you?" he enquired with similar anger. "These brats have gone so far as to disturb Adamastor with their squabbling! Aizen has played us all for fools!"

"Where was your _summons_?" hissed back the healer, the oldest in Soul Society after himself. If Yamamoto were the patriarch, Unohana was the matriarch. Today she had no wish to back down at his accusations. "I was helping Kurotsuchi dismantle the Octava Espada. Why did you not send a single messenger? Were you hypnotised to forget all your options and simple hand the Ouken over?" Her face remained poker-straight, but her eyes and voice lashed out.

The old man sighed, kneeling down on the cracked floor, and laying his staff before his knees. "Aizen and Kyouka Suigetsu have powers beyond us all. It took Hinamori to convince us of that, and remind me that I am not the strongest. The Spirit King can protect himself, loathe as I am to send evil into his palace. Before he left, the scum challenged me to use Eschatos, my bankai! A few million lives sacrificed for a good cause, he said!"

"Had you called me, you could have," snapped Retsu. Her zanpakuto, Minazuki, was strung over her shoulder by its red cord, and now she placed a tense hand on it.

"He needs only step into a Garganta to avoid Ryuujin Jakka's flames, as the Tercera Espada did when I thought her dead. These are not foolish opponents, Retsu. We are not so almighty as we thought."

"Nor are we as weak as he thinks. Call a grand council of war in Seireitei. I have made the preparations, and all exiles will be invited, naturally." She tipped her head, listening to the flow of energy once again. "You should prepare to meet your 'old friend' in the Spirit Realm and apologise to him."

A towering red Torii gate shimmered into being, suspended in mid-air. A large crowd of shinigami began to march out, half bearing the medical backpacks of the Fourth Division, and the other half bearing zanpakutos to guard them, the Fifth Division soldiers arriving to right their former captain's wrongs.

"By 'preparations' you mean overturning the majority of my bans and rulings?" Yamamoto glowered at the peace keeping brigade under his long eyebrows, the scars across his forehead wrinkling as he frowned.

"Naturally," smiled Retsu with perfect grace.

**o)0(o**

"What are you doing here?" asked Ichigo rudely as Kuukaku sauntered diagonally down the sky towards his house.

"What's that? You want another ride in the cannon? Well, you are certainly a thrill-seeker, Itsygo! I came to see some other idiot, I believe you know him quite well."

"KUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

A fully grown adult crashed right into her. She caught his head and slammed it into her knee with the traditional Shiba anti-idiot defence technique. In fact, Ichigo found it remarkably similar to his own anti-idiot reflexes.

"UNCLE ISSH!" she exclaimed brightly, hugging the reeling man. "It's been twenty years! How you doin'?"

"Uncle?" echoed Ichigo in a deathly soft voice, looking from Kuukaku, to Isshin, to Kuukaku, to Isshin, to the crazy semi-banished banshee who fired him out of a cannon to infiltrate a city her clan was sworn to protect, to the retarded doctor who also happened to be a former captain who had beaten him up down and sideways every morning and evening of his life.

They both grinned identically.

"We're related! Didn't anyone ever tell you you look like Shiba Kaien?"

"I…uh…what? OH!" Ichigo smacked a fist against his palm and pointed at his father in sudden realisation. "There _is_ a family resemblance! …You and Ganju are both fugly!"

"How could you – so – disgraceful! You and Kaien, I meant! Even Rukia noticed!"

"Well I've never seen the guy, wasn't he dead before I was born?"

"Aha, I can help you there!" Isshin whipped out a photo deck and let the family slideshow unravel. Ichigo gawked at it.

"You've been carrying that in your pocket my whole life, haven't you? The truth was inches away the entire time, just like the poster of Okaa-chan…" Said poster of his mother had remained permanently showing its shinigami side ever since their true parentage had been revealed.

"So this is me playing with Kaien when he was a little boy, and here's Kaien eating mud pies; see how similar you are?"

"We're completely opposite!" argued Ichigo. "Look, he has black hair and green eyes!"

"It's the Shiba jaw line and the Shiba permanently-disgruntled-frown! Besides, who knows why you're a soulless ginger, it's probably a freak throwback to 1649; unless Matsumoto really _was_ your mother, though you'd think Masaki would've noticed… And this is Kuukaku when she was little hiding firecrackers in Ganju's sandpit! _That_ was a memorable day! Isn't she just the spitting image of Karin?"

"So I'm gonna look like this when I grow up?" asked Karin, as she and Yuzu both stared at Kuukaku in awe. The Shiba clan leader grinned devilishly, waving at her little cousins, and Karin admitted herself impressed.

"Have I ever told you just how much I really hate you, Oyaji?" asked Ichigo conversationally.

"Such cruelty and non-filial loyalty! When I'm the reason you'rein line to inherit one of the prestigious Noble Houses?"

"Besides that being totally irrelevant since we live in the _real world_, you're completely useless! When I paid a visit to my ancestral home, child of a Captain and a Third Seat and cousin to a clan leader – they all called me ryoka and tried to kill me! And why? Because you're an evil liar, Oyaji!"

"Ha! Next he'll tell us Okaa-chan is that Soutaicho guy's daughter," scoffed Karin, teaming up against their father.

"Yeah, your life is too ridiculous! We disown you!" Ichigo pointed at the ex-taicho angrily.

"Don't be stupid, kids, Masaki was a Quincy." He watched them face-fault and burst out laughing. "Just kidding, she's from Rukongai. And I forbid you to disown me. If any of you try to do that again you'll be grounded in your rooms for the next decade. Except Yuzu, because she's too adorable to lock up."

"I give up. Watch, I'm gonna go through this deadly portal that might make my Hollow half explode, to hell knows what freakish dimension, _just to get away from you_." And with that scathing finale, he grabbed Inoue by the hand and stalked towards the King's Gate, dragging the babbling girl behind him.

"Wait, Ichigo!" snapped a bossy voice, used to being obeyed. And indeed, it was a voice that had convinced him to walk onto the point of her sword within five minutes of meeting her. "We're not going there yet!"

"What makes you so convinced we're invited?" The teenager genuinely hadn't thought twice about entering. "I'm going now before some old geezer remembers to forbid it."

"Well, you tend to end up in the middle of any trouble regardless, but still there's no way I'm letting some teenage human brat I recruited go to the Royal Realm before I do." Rukia folded her arms and cackled at the very idea of it.

"Rukia…my humanity's getting disproven more and more every day…" groaned Ichigo, wallowing in his identity crisis.

Just as Ichigo swerved aside from the King's Gate and detoured to the red torii dominating Karakura's deformed skyline, he spotted Neliel balancing on the edge of the portal, pinwheeling her arms.

"Oi! What are you doing, Nel?"

"Ah, Itsygo," answered the educated, serious tones of Tu Oderschvank, the Quinta Espada. "I'm wondering."

"Wondering what?" he asked, though after Wonderwice's fatal skydive he could guess.

"…You may recall sometime after our first meeting in Hueco Mundo we talked about hearts and the Hougyoku. I'm not sure if the Hougyoku _did_ give my heart back, except I lost my hunger and madness; or if it just takes yet more away from Arrancars, even their last instincts to eat. It left Margera and Tenebra completely empty. But there'd be only one way to know for sure." She teetered on the brink of annihilation, the white knight of Las Noches swaying back and forth, a child playing.

"Hey, hey, I understand, but why risk it?"

"Itsygo, a shinigami should say 'you have nothing left to lose'." She regarded him with sad fawn eyes.

"Yeah but," said Ichigo wretchedly; "_I'd smack anyone who told me that so hard their face'd fall off._"

"Oh! Hollow Ichigo!" sang Neliel brightly. "I saw you get trounced by your little sister in Las Noches, it's a pleasure to finally meet you! I bet you could've made _Tres_ if you'd stayed."

"_Don't take the piss, antelope girl. I'd've been Number One. It's in my name, Ichi for first place."_

"Still below Shirojos, I see," mused the Quinta. Hichigo grumbled and looked away, eyes slightly golden, frown twice as frowny.

"If you want to try it, I'll bring you back if you get ex-terrrr-min-ate-ed, Nel-chan!" proposed Dalek-Orihime brightly, waving for the arrancar's attention. Ichigo nearly died of shock, having evidently forgotten she was behind him. "He's a neglectful boyfriend," stage-whispered Inoue in response to this; "but anyway, if you leave me something to resurrect you with, it won't matter what happens!"

"Boyfriend? !" cooed the Espada, terror of Hueco Mundo, loyal soldier of Aizen-sama; ecstatic at this scandalous gossip. She passed over her zanpakuto, the sealed reservoir of her true form, obediently. "Is he good in - ?"

Hichigo shoved her into the portal just before the embarrassing sentence ended.

"_Bye Nel,"_ he whistled; screams ringing out from within the glow.

"Hichigo-kun!" cried Inoue in dismay. "You didn't even shout 'surprise'!"

Another scream pierced their ears. "It _hurts_!" keened Nel Tu, clinging to the golden edge of the white garganta. "Aaaaa! Save me!" The chamois skull crowning her waves of pale green hair was dissolving millimetre by millimetre, her face screwed up in pain. But she hadn't vanished.

With no little apprehension of his own Ichigo stretched down and pulled her out. She clung to his arm so hard it hurt. "Give me back!" sobbed the Arrancar, stumbling past him to snatch her zanpakuto back from Inoue's loose grip. "Aaaaa…" wailed the woman, hugging the sword close to her chest, rocking back and forth. There was a fluffy implosion of smoke, and child-Nel sprawled on the floor, her precious zanpakuto hidden away.

"Itsygo…Hitsygo…" she snivelled; "Nel on'y godda half a heart…"

"Look on the bright side," said Ichigo pathetically and trailed off, not sure what it was.

"Aren't you the last Espada?" encouraged Inoue, as this deserved some credit. Her hands still tingled strangely where they'd held Gamyuza. It was an unspoken taboo to touch another person's zanpakuto, like holding their beating heart in your palm.

The toddler only wailed louder.

"_Nya, that makes you Queenie of Hueco Mundo!"_ said Hichigo in sudden triumph. "_Everyone stronger fucked off or died._"

The sovereign ruler of the desert wiped her streaming nose on a sleeve and hiccupped. "…Qween Nel Tu-sama?"

…And gave an evil, gap-toothed grin.

**o)0(o**

Hitsugaya was standing strictly to attention beside his ragtag collection of prisoners, waiting in the great hall for the council of war to begin. And it was a mess. He wasn't quite sure what Unohana-taicho had been aiming for.

In the centre, where everyone could keep a beady eye on them, were himself and the surviving invaders: the Primera, the Tercera and her Tres Bestia Fraccions, and the Quatro. Or in clearer terms: an overgrown blue dog that someone had set on fire, a brown-skinned human woman who somehow kept three heckling arrancars firmly under her thumb, and a paper-white Plus soul with a long black tail. This last one was hugging his knees to his chest, one hand counting the pulse of his new heart, trying desperately to measure the weight of a Plus compared to a Minus. His whipcord tail was curled defensively around his hunched body, and maudlin green eyes stared at everything with a sense of profound uncertainty.

Ringed about them were the captains and vice-captains – which would have made perfect sense, except half the captains were on stretchers, and half the vice-captains were holding a powwow in the corner of the hall, debating how they could gain any glory and coolness now that all the invaders were dead or defeated.

"Thus far, five lieutenants have been useful in this war, whilst four have not, and three positions are empty. Under these statistics, the Association of Vices is operating at less than fifty percent efficiency." Nanao flicked through her book of reports, adjusting her glasses, and ran a finger down the newest page. "Yachiru has failed to report. Momo and Choujirou were instrumental in recovery of the Ouken, Rukia and Izuru fought on the frontlines, whilst Nemu provided medical support on the battlefield and transported wounded officers back from Karakura. And by the looks of her somehow got a crush on that Quincy kid. The logic of it escapes me."

"After performing blood dialysis I was left infected both by his imbalanced biochemistry and the Septima's _ayahuasca_ poisons," protested Kurotsuchi Nemu softly, blushing in denial. "That cannot be assumed to equate with physical feelings."

Nanao huffed and threw a writing brush at the mod-soul. "Look at her! Now she talks back! There's clearly something wrong with her!"

"On behalf of the Shinigami Men's Association," ventured Iba Tetsuzaemon glumly; "Hisagi usually comes through for us on the 'cool factor', but I'm not sure why he didn't show. I found him afterwards trying to interview the POWs for a _Las Noches special_ in the Shinigami Gazette. He's taken the hiatus hard. I was on the other side of Rukongai buying sake for Ikkaku, and of course Omaeda doesn't count."

"When Soi Fon-taicho found out I was still alive, she said 'Try harder to die'," griped Marechiyo, comfort eating.

Hisagi Shuuhei sidled up to his colleagues with a reporter's notepad and a camera in hand. "I have good news and bad news!"

"Well?" snapped Nanao. She wasn't in a good mood, as her captain Kyoraku had been lazy again; fraternising with an Espada, drinking on the job, and then having the nerve to pull some crazy karate she'd never heard of out of his ass and make everyone else look bad.

"Madarame Ikkaku just got promoted to Eleventh's fukutaicho, which improves our overall ratings since he fought the Septima Espada." Hisagi glanced at his notepad and scratched at his 69 tattoo in distraction. "The bad news is he then injured Komamura, got trussed up by the Quincy, was out-fought by ex-Tenth Kurosaki-taicho, and they were all beaten to the kill by Substitute Ichigo or possibly his Hollow. That seems to be a grey area lately."

"Damn it, Ichigo!" hissed Nanao, gritting her teeth. "Always interfering! We could've done it if not for that meddling kid!"

"Yo, fuku-losers!" chirped a happy, bubblegum pink voice from somewhere near their knees. They all looked down.

"SWA President," Nanao greeted her uncertainly. "Is mid-war an appropriate time to be cosplaying Zaraki-taicho?"

Yachiru had inexplicably taken to wearing an eye patch over her left eye, and had attached bells to the ends of two skinny pink braids framing her face. She had also acquired a raggedy little captain's cloak from somewhere, and since her pink wheelie zanpakuto had melted, she was waving a jagged carving knife around happily.

"Ken-chan said I couldn't be a vice-captain anymore 'cause I'm not a real shinigami so Baldy got bumped up to Second Seat!"

"Why'd he say that?" asked Iba. He'd be first to admit that Yachiru didn't have the faintest clue what a shinigami's duties were beyond searching for the next thug for her captain to pulverise, but that had never mattered in the past. People didn't argue with Zaraki.

"I'm really a chainsaw!" cheered Yachiru, and skipped off, leaving them mystified. "Chainsaw-taicho! Wooo!"

Nemu tilted her head slightly. "I construe there will be a large hole in the back of Zaraki-taicho's haori when he is next able to get up."

**o)0(o**

Ayasegawa Yumichika fidgeted nervously in front of his captain. The truth was out. He was a cheater. His shikai was a poncy vampire and not the brute brawler required of his division. He'd be kicked out of Eleventh and into Fourth as punishment, made an example of. Both Fourth _and_ Eleventh threatened their unruly members with transfer into the opposite squad.

"Right," grunted Kenpachi with an ugly look on his face. The wolves had really mauled him, and Yumichika was quite dismayed that his leader was now uglier than ever, even though he had always made the demon an exception from his personal laws of outer beauty and inner-doesn't-matter. "Yer Third Seat now."

Yumichika swooned. Such a beautiful number! The epitome of grace!

"And yer my new sparrin' partner."

Such a cold slap of harsh reality to the face.

"B-but Ikkaku has bankai now! Isn't he better…?"

Zaraki grinned ferociously, much like the wolves that had used him as a chew toy. "Yer said, an' I quote: _'I kin take yer power and use it against ya.'_ I'll give yer a week or two to drain mine, an' then we'll see if I can get a decent fight in this dump."

"B-b-but…" gibbered Yumichika, as a sinister pink presence hopped onto his shoulder and grinned at him with its new eye patch.

"Me n' Ken-chan wanna test out our shikai," giggled Yachiru, and he finally thought to wonder how Ikkaku could become lieutenant, when Kusajishi would no more give up her rank than she would share candy.

…_Shikai?_

_He was dead already._

**o)0(o**

Toushiro looked towards the hall entrance and scowled as Karin filtered into the room with her brother and various other exiles, ryoka and nobles as the Karakura contingent returned. He stalked over to her and ignored the rest.

"What did I tell you?" he snapped.

"Hey, I didn't technically leave the room." She lifted her hands in innocence. "I went out through a senkai gate. I never went near the office door."

"That's not even a technicality."

"But Shiro-chan, evil denizens of hell tried to attack the HQ! Who the heck would stick around?"

He was about to argue, then remembered the vast arm that had stretched out of Hell's Gate after it had taken Barragan Luisenbarn. And there was an albino hell butterfly, a kind he'd never seen before, sunning itself on the back of her shoulder. He frowned and turned to the others.

That was just too much to deal with at once. Isshin especially.

"You and you, with me," he ordered, and marched back to his safe haven of arrancars in the middle of the huge, crowded room.

Karin and Nel looked at each other dubiously.

"They're still lumping me in with you weirdoes?"

"Don't sass the Qween, Tenebwa."

**o)0(o**

"Hewwo my woyal subjects," drooled Nel. "I brought Tenebwa Shiwoho to vizzit yew."

The former top echelon of Aizen's Minus army all studied each other.

"Arff!" barked the Primera happily.

"Shirojos," said the Tercera calmly. "You seem well." There was little else to say.

"These so-called 'hearts' should be extracted and examined to quantify their unequal humanity," murmured the Quatro listlessly.

"Did I menshun I'm Qween?" dribbled the Quinta. "I'm da Qweenta!"

The Zero stared at them all silently. It was too surreal. Should she stay silent, try to dominate them, ignore them, as before; or just do what Karin would do?

But Karin's basic reflex was to kick danger in the head with a football, and she didn't have one handy. Yuzu would tell her to be polite, so the former child-soldier settled for greeting them all in turn.

"Well…you're a dog." She thought patting him might burn her hand off. "Actually I always wanted a pet dog but Oyaji wouldn't allow them in the clinic. I'll find you some biscuits later. Maybe you'll like Hollow Bait like Morff does."

Coyote, or perhaps Lilynette, woofed a salute at the sound of the gecko's name, pleased it had found a good home.

"Um…Tia…" Karin had no idea what to say. Hallibel had mentored her and guarded her from the petty grievances of lower ranks, but was that worth thanks? "My name is Kurosaki Karin. Not Tenebra Shirojos. And _not_," she gritted her teeth; "_Zero!_"

Tia inclined her head. "I have no replacement name to offer you, Kurosaki Karin, despite shedding my mask and losing Tiburón, I remain Tia Hallibel. I have been promised things in return for my sacrifice, but I do not see this small captain delivering them."

Toushiro coughed. The Soutaicho had ditched the proud Tercera on him on the spur of the moment, perhaps as replacement cleavage since Matsumoto's death, and the chibi taicho wasn't quite sure what to do. Enrol her in the Academy?

"We'll eat him if he doesn't pay up," growled Apacci like a gangster.

"Did I _ever_ permit you to eat others?" asked Hallibel calmly, no mind that she had barely an ounce of spiritual pressure left to cow them with.

"If you get Hallibel-sama into trouble, I'll kill you, Apacci," swore Mila Rose, jabbing the other Fraccion with her zanpakuto.

"Little boy, I suggest you sublimate both these idiots before their stupidity infects others," said Sun-Sun softly and condescendingly.

"You BITCH!" shouted the other two, turning on her. Toushiro didn't stop them fighting, because the 'little boy' remark had hit a nerve.

"Nel," continued Karin, sniggering at the Tres Bestias.

"Wassup? Do you want my Woyal Bwessing?"

"Thanks for dragging me out of Hueco Mundo," smiled the girl honestly; "and helping Toushiro find me." Her eyes lit up. "And you should've seen him _run!_ Hell, he's awesome at Eternal Tag!"

"I – I didn't run!" argued Hitsugaya, turning pink. "I strategized!"

"Can we play?" begged Nel Tu, clinging to his ankle and drooling on his sandals. "The Qweenta commandth you!"

And last the Zero looked at Ulquiorra.

"You know, your life was freaking _miserable_. Did you have to show me that?"

"You recall it?" asked the Plus in mild surprise. Indeed, he had crushed his eye and scattered his memories over her, to show her how to fight when she was mindless.

"I wish I didn't!" retorted Karin, and with a sigh, flopped down on the floor, crossed one knee over the other with her foot bobbing in the air, folded her arms behind her head and began to whistle aimlessly, the awkward reintroductions complete.

"Ano…" A nervous voice edged into their misfit group. "Do any of you know Tousen-san's recipe for Hueco Hotpot and Cero Surprise? I want to serve it at the first Arrancars Anonymous meeting."

Karin blinked at Orihime and burst out laughing.

"Arrancars Anonymous?" asked Hallibel strangely.

"Yes! It's a support group. You know, like 'Hello, my name's Ulquiorra Schiffer, and I'm a recovering Hollow-oholic!' I thought it might help. I want to invite the Vaizards too but they haven't turned up yet."

"Woman," croaked Ulquiorra, stricken. "This 'heart' thing makes no sense to me, either explain it, or take it out!"

"That will all be covered in the course booklet," Inoue reassured him quickly. "And Ishida-kun will make us our own t-shirts!"

In Hitsugaya's analysis of the hall, he noted the clan leaders gathering at the top of the room to flank the Soutaicho; exiles and ryoka clustering near the door where they could make a quick getaway if needed. Finally, he observed Unohana lay a hand on Inoue's shoulder and gently draw her attention away from the newly-founded AA.

"The Soutaicho is not keen to rely on you too heavily, Inoue-san, but in my experience we should take full advantage of any help we can get. There are some patients here I'd be grateful if you would help."

"Of course!" replied Orihime immediately, turning round with a gasp. "But…Shiba-san, why are you at the front of the queue?"

"Because I've been waiting the longest to get my arm back!" announced Kuukaku with impeccable common sense. Behind her, Soi Fon and Hanataro were also sporting the season's latest stumps. And behind them was a room full of burns, head wounds, severe exhaustion, broken bones and mauled muscles.

Orihime smiled, a little unnerved by the high expectations. "I, I can't recover reiatsu very quickly, so I can't bring everyone back to full strength, Unohana-san… but for the injuries, that's uh… Souten Kisshun!" A huge amber umbrella opened over everyone in the hall, a second ceiling hovering beneath the first. Orange light and a sense of wellbeing enveloped all beneath.

"Can you do that many at once?" asked Retsu in pleasant surprise. But Inoue had stuck her fingers in her ears and begun to hum a bizarre little 'Wa ha ha' song, in her struggle to concentrate on so many wildly different people with interference from so many foreign, Espada-level reiatsus at once. _Perhaps a lot more scatty than Isane,_ the captain amended mentally.

There seemed to be no fear that Inoue would stick the wrong things back on the wrong people. "You really trust her, don't you?" Hitsugaya noted, as the healer watched the space-manipulating ryoka with a look of pride.

"I want to kill her," sighed Retsu wistfully.

**o)0(o**

The entire hall waited with bated breath for the summons to heaven.

Yamamoto Genryuusai-Shigekuni examined them in silence, beady black eyes sweeping the assembly. Less than an hour had passed since the rebel's ascension, but many of his elite officers were champing at the bit to give chase, now that their jaws were no longer broken. The Shun Shun Rikka were still hard at work, and his army grew more and more alert as he spoke.

"The betrayer will not be allowed to storm the heavens without hindrance! However it is far more important to go prepared than to go swiftly. Aizen will not find what he seeks quickly, we can be certain of that. I have chosen eight who will go with me, according to their strengths, their health, their hierarchy, their involvement, and most importantly, their zanpakuto spirits."

"Surely yer just mean the strongest? Gimme a few more minutes under this tanning lamp, I'll sort that little shit out for you."

"You would be the worst choice of all, Zaraki," growled the Soutaicho. "Since your zanpakuto spirit is here and not there, and look at the shrunken state of her! Yachiru!"

"Old fogey sir!" bellowed the tiny girl, saluting with a flourish.

"It is time your deception of the Gotei ended."

Shuffling her feet and hanging her pink head, Kusajishi twisted from side to side like a guilty toddler. She muttered rebelliously. "…Never said I _wasn't_ Ken-chan's zanpakuto."

Yamamoto roared a lecture at his troops. "Do not think of the King's Realm as anything like our own! And do not think of your zanpakuto as swords but as people! Solid people who exist day to day, who are stupid and impulsive and rob their colleagues blind just as Yachiru has done to you all for years! ….And she appears to have promoted herself, too."

"It's a two for one deal," explained Kusajishi-taicho with disarming innocence. The rest present were staring at her in horrified understanding of her true nature.

"Regardless, before that place was called the King's Realm, it was known by all as the Spirit Realm, the secret pantheon of all eighty million kami spoken of in myth. You will arrive empty-handed, for your swords are their projection into Soul Society, and they cannot take such shortcuts in their own dimension. And so, although I wish to take the heads of each noble clan to swear their allegiance to the King they have all but forgotten, I cannot take those without allies."

Shiba Kuukaku spat on the floor to show what she thought of that, and shouted out "Well then, I call upon my uncle and heir Kurosaki Isshin to go in my place! Shiba Isshin?"

The doctor gaped at her. "Kuu-chan, I think you've forgotten someone very important."

"Ganju?" said Kuukaku in disgust. "But he doesn't have a zanpakuto either."

"Yuzu." Isshin folded his arms and radiated stubborn immovability. "I'm attending this meeting, but I'm not leaving my last living child alone in a blast zone. She might trip or graze her knee or something."

"There are more important things!" rumbled the Soutaicho, and Isshin didn't bat an eyelid.

"No. Not today. You have thirteen squads full of soldiers, which I left with or without permission twenty years ago. I only have one child who hasn't been dragged into your war. And if you think the Hollows will stay in Hueco Mundo after some crazy moon-Hollow woke up and Urahara nuked it, you must've been born yesterday. Sir. I'll also be looking after Jinta and Ururu for you, Kisuke!" called Isshin, pitching his voice across the room.

"Let him stay," said Byakuya, turning his noble face away. "We four will be enough without the banished house."

"Well, Byakuya, let me reject your reality and _substitute_ my own! I summon the Shinigami Substitute Kurosaki Ichigo to stand in for the Shiba Clan, and I seriously hope no one argues, because the brat's already beaten the shit out of half of you and I'm sure he'd do it again."

Ichigo looked gobsmacked. He'd only found out half an hour ago! Now he was representing a Noble House? He had to stand next to Byakuya and look lordly? Forget it.

Kuukaku and Isshin squinted at him expectantly.

"Well I can't be worse than Ganju or Dad," he grumbled, conceding. It felt weird to be invited to the centre of the trouble, usually he had to gate-crash.

"Thank fuck _you_ see sense, Shiba Ichigo, otherwise I'd have to ask Karin."

"_Don't even joke."_

"Sasakibe, Shihouin and Kyoraku are all fit to attend." The Soutaicho turned his eyes towards the last House. "But Kuchiki Byakuya, your Senbonzakura is sorely wounded. How will he come to your aid?"

"There are no other members of my blood, Soutaicho," admitted the noble stiffly. "Unless you would call upon an elder to hobble about the Spirit Realm in search of the zanpakuto he hung up three hundred years ago."

Rukia darted forwards. "We can't be the only Noble House not to attend, Nii-sama! I'll go!"

Byakuya gave her the cold shoulder, answering with simple but harsh accuracy. "You are no blood of mine."

"But my zanpakuto is in better shape than yours, Nii-sama, and to be frank, even those born into your family might end up with any zanpakuto spirit, right? I won't be a poor imitation. Sode no Shirayuki is also the most beautiful of all the ice-types, isn't that so," boasted the pretender to his bloodline. _And she once beat Senbonzakura_, added Rukia mentally, and by the distaste on her adoptive brother's face he was remembering the same incident.

"Well it's true of most clans," yawned Yoruichi with an odd twist to her smile, stretching her arms. "I second Rukia's claim."

The commander nodded tiredly, and Rukia punched the air, hand in a gang-sign, and whooped. "KUCHIKI CLAN REPRESENT! BOOYAH!" Then she metamorphosed from street ruffian into the perfect cultured lady, gliding elegantly to join the invasion party with her head demurely bowed. Renji was hooting with laughter and throwing the same hand-sign back at his partner in crime. Byakuya looked vaguely terrified.

"And so, there are six. For the other two, I summon Urahara Kisuke, the root of all this disorder. Well? Aizen has taken the Hougyoku with him, I have no doubt. It is past time you took responsibility for your creation."

"Is it not useless now?" whispered Hallibel to Schiffer, who had seen with his empirical eyes just how all new arrancars crumbled into grey dust since Inoue had rejected it. He nodded morosely, but the burning omega wolf growled and shook its head ever so slightly.

"Ah, never fear, Yama-sama," trilled Urahara, waving his fan coquettishly. "I planned to invite myself there anyway." This was his first jaunt into Soul Society in a hundred years, and he was quite enjoying himself. But their leader had already moved on.

"And the human, Inoue Orihime."

"What? !" squeaked the girl. Ichigo or Hichigo sighed in relief.

"If the worst should befall and Aizen should murder the Spirit King for god's throne; who else but you could play at being god and reject such a bitter reality?"

"I don't play at being god," whispered Orihime, hushed by the magnitude of his accusation.

"What else should we call it? You mock the shadow of death more than any reaper does."

"I don't," she trembled; "I couldn't, you shouldn't say that."

Genryuusai slammed his staff down, impatient with her denial. She flinched back. "That is the one truth you _cannot_ reject!"

"But if you say it like that," Inoue shivered helplessly; "how am I meant to live with all the people I _haven't_ resurrected? What about Sora, what about Masaki, what about Matsumoto? What about everyone in Yammy's stomach? What about all the people lying dead in Rukongai and Seireitei?" She'd seen them, on her way from the torii gate to the great hall, a flock of dead ravens. She hadn't seen the commoners as vast walls had descended to protect the Court of Pure Souls during the invasion, but she was sure they looked just the same, only piled higher. Her pursuit of recipes for the AA meetings had only been a distraction from the dead bodies haunting her memories, as most of her odd habits were. She needed such diversions, otherwise the silence of the victims ate her up inside like the loudest cries of blame. "If you don't say it has limits, then _why haven't I saved them all?_ Then if I haven't saved them, _it's my fault they're dead_!"

The hall fell silent, as if the grim fate she rejected was standing among them, sharpening its scythe.

"_Is that what god is, just the one you blame when people stay dead? !"_ she begged quietly, because she'd believed it for a long time after Sora died, and she didn't want to be that god.

"Is that what Aizen plans to become?" The Soutaicho questioned her softly.

She stared at her feet. She didn't want the whole world to become Las Noches, empty white corridors and demons whispering behind the walls. Aizen wouldn't be a benign god to be silently accused.

"_Of course she's coming, and who gives a fuck why,"_ snapped Ichigo in a strangled voice, hustling the redhead into the Fellowship of the King. _"She's coming because I say so."_ When Inoue looked fit to burst into tears at him, he murmured in her ear more softly; "If I go Hollow over there, I'll die before Hichigo can scream. You said before: you can't save me if you're not there."

"Oh," she whimpered, preferring his reasoning to the commander's damning praise. "Oh, okay, yes." She clung to his hand behind her back, because Ichigo didn't like public displays of affection, and tried to compose herself. "I can't bring them back, now, you know…"

"I know," he replied. He knew that she probably could, and why she never would.

"Even Rangiku-chan…I could save her, but not Gin who she died to be with, they'd never let me…I don't think she'd thank me…" She was still shaking. "But might it be worth finding out?"

"_Stop," _hissed Ichigo; "_just stop thinking about it!"_

Because it was unnatural, what she did, it went against every law, and no one was meant to carry that burden of swimming against the flow of time.

"Well," coughed Juushiro politely for attention, and not because he was dying. "To that eight, the Soutaicho, five clans, an exile and a human, I'd like to add one more." He pulled an ancient, stained, crumpled parchment out of his pocket. "As you can see, I have my own invitation to the King's Realm here, or at least the Zero Division. I received it in, mm, the 1800s, I think. It says something about a permanent cure, and I didn't feel like going alone, however it's rather convenient now."

"I cannot deny your claim, Juushiro. But the eight I mentioned were besides myself. There is one more." He glowered towards the centre of the room. The corralled arrancars glowered back.

"There is no Tiburón, no Murciélago; no Gamyuza there. No Las Lobos. Our selves are not there for they have no hearts. The King's Realm has no place for our shadows," declared Tia Hallibel, daring him to steal the strength of the Espada, to admit they had exceeded captains in strength.

"There is no Tiburón or Murciélago here either." Ulquiorra spat, bitter, feeling its absence keenly.

"But there will be a _Naraku_," Tia corrected him, and both pairs of green eyes fixed on Karin.

"Aizen-sama confirmed it himself, she was a Vaizard," realised Schiffer slowly, recalling the events Hallibel alluded to.

"Woz she?" gurgled Nel. "Uh oh. Itsygo'll go spare."

Coyote snarled deep in his lupine throat, thinking back. _Halfway between Arrancar and Vaizard. Broken mask, or heartless zanpakuto…. _

"Oh haha, I get it. I'm worthless, but they still want _***%*%$ "£$**_ as an 'ally'," griped Karin to her nearest and not-dearest. "I'm zanpakuto bait _again_." The arrancars all nodded in eerie remembrance of when the Zero had intimidated them and just once, Aizen.

"How did you even pronounce that?" asked Toushiro, her attempt to say Naraku's secret name resembling nails down a blackboard.

"The Heavenly Guardian," announced the Commander finally. "An undeniable champion of the Spirit King."

"_Ooohhh_," exhaled Toushiro and Karin in unison. "_Hyourinmaru_…"

"What did you expect? No Hollow ever held a true zanpakuto." The Soutaicho insulted them, and Nel hugged her Gamyuza comfortingly, as if to say the big nasty shinigami didn't mean it.

"It's something else," giggled Yachiru.

The room fell silent.

"What? We never thought _Naraku_ would bond with a human," jeered the living sword, relishing the centre of attention. "_Chained but unbound._ All the bajillion kami aren't even sure what _that_ freak is."

"Is it strong?" perked up Zaraki, the reject.

"Kenny'd be a toothpick," said Yachiru with solemn finality, closing her eyes.

Shigekuni felt a rare chill down his spine as every Kurosaki in the hall focused on him, three intense stares. _Daring him to do it, daring him not to, daring the unleashing of a monster once declared dead, daring him to leave an innocent who died too soon in peace_.

"Ten, then. Unohana Retsu, I leave my city in your hands."

**o)0(o**

"Byeeee!" sobbed Neliel theatrically, waving a hollow hankie at the departing militia. "Watch out for the tiger!"

"What tiger?" asked Ichigo, one of the last to enter, as a young, boyish scream rang out through the glittering portal.

"That tiger!" grinned the Queen of Hueco Mundo.

_Hesitate and you will die, retreat and you will age,_ thought Ichigo. Eyes screwed tight shut, breath held, he let himself fall into heavens that might tear him apart, before he had the sense to run away.

**o)0(o**

Hitsugaya had just passed through the gate, barely catching a glimpse of the new world when the tiger pounced; a rippling pelt of livid orange and ashen grey stripes, like cracks in cooling magma. Shock tore an uncaptain-like yelp from his throat. It padded from side to side, circling and prowling around him, pressing its heat low to the grass to singe it and growling blood-curdlingly all the while. It was twenty feet tall at the shoulder at least, and left patterns of black paw prints wherever it stepped.

"**T**iger **T**iger **B**urning **B**right," crooned the big cat in a hoarse, melodious voice. A diva that had become a heavy smoker. "_**I**__n the __**D**__esert's __**S**__ilver __**N**__ight;"_

He reached for his sword, but it had vanished, even its voice. He felt almost naked, vulnerable, yet he had experienced Hyourinmaru's absence so recently that it barely gave him pause. He darted left, then right, but each time a huge white paw would bat him back, daring not touch.

The long tail flicked playfully, char and embers, black and red. _"__**O**__n __**W**__hat __**W**__ings__** D**__are __**H**__e __**A**__spire?"_ as if knowing he longed to fly away and counter from above.

"_**W**__hat the __**H**__and __**D**__are __**S**__eize the __**F**__ire?"_ Hot ash flakes rained down, Toushiro felt them cut at his skin as they stuck to his cheeks like a wildfire's teardrops.

_In the desert's silver night,_ he realised, where she had died. "Haineko!" breathed Toushiro, barely believing it. His hand stretched out in awe, and the ash cat flinched back.

"_Smart word, stupid action," _snorted the feline in a puff of sparks, lying down in the burnt long grass. _"What a genius. Keep your pale skin. No petting at the zoo."_

"Haineko, you came to help us?" asked Hitsugaya, enraptured. Imagine Matsumoto's bankai, with a spirit like this!

"_Who would, with no one else to swing the blade for me?"_ yawned the tiger of hot coals, curling up to cat nap.

His eye twitched. "Rangiku said you were lazy."

"_Nyaah? I only came to tell you where she was now. Immediately, she is in Morocco, enjoying the sun I dared take a bite from, chronologically, she flew far back in time and became a cave girl, you human souls get lost so easily. And the snake chased her all ways, like the tail on a nue, like a chimera born in two bodies. I have no kinship with Shinso, he slashed these stripes into my skin. I cut his face fearfully, so he must move quickly, ever out of sight, to hide his shame." _The tigress stretched luxuriously, glowing brighter and brighter till dark shadows were cast all around, then vanished strand by strand, with a Cheshire cat smile.

And before the lingering embers faded, a ninja slipped out of the shadows Haineko had left behind, laid a hand on Kyoraku's arm, and began to drag him into the dark.

"You must be wary. She's playing for keeps," warned the shrouded woman.

"Can we fight with one sword, Katen? Ah… I guess not. Kageoni then?"

The stern woman gave a single nod. Shunsui waved cheerily goodbye to the alarmed fellowship. "Seems I'm going on ahead, they want to play hide and seek. See you!" A paper-thin black fist enveloped them both, shadows streaking away at the speed of night.

"And the first one is lost," said Yoruichi morbidly. She seemed profoundly uninspired by the zanpakuto spirits, and in no rush to meet her own.

"We can only hope they will all be that eager to be found. Fortunately we have been sent a guide." The Soutaicho raised his whiskered chin and tilted his head behind them.

A flaming bird the size of a roc was roosting on the roof of the King's Gate, preening its fiery pinions. It gave a great cry like the ring of a bronze gong when they looked up in awe.

"It's a phoenix!" whooped Karin, as Toushiro said "Is that Ryuujin Jakka?"

"No," said Rukia, feeling weak-kneed. "Don't you recognise the Soukyoku? Maybe your view wasn't as good as mine…"

It tipped its head towards Ichigo, who automatically reached for Zangetsu only to find the giant cleaver wasn't there. He thought the Soukyoku had been destroyed by Ukitake, who was now bowing to his victim in politeness and slight worry. Instead it had just gone home?

"_It remembers us_," wibbled Rukia. Suddenly she regretted coming.

"I wonder if you truly can block the strength of a million zanpakuto, Substitute," laughed the Soutaicho grimly. "I believe he was lenient on the day of the execution."

"Without Zangetsu?" sweated Ichigo, and not daring to rely on his Hollow side.

"He is only a chick compared to the true phoenix," said Yamamoto paternally. "A candle beside the sun."

The candle nudged Ichigo with its beak, who had to burst into his own flaming, blue-black reiatsu to guard against its heat, and they engaged in a gentle, megaton tug-of-war until Ichigo finally shoved the roc away and flopped gasping onto the grass. The bird unleashed a melodic, bubbling laugh-song.

"Stop laughing at me you overgrown canary," wheezed the Substitute, drenched in sweat and scared half-witless by the proximity of the Soukyoku's fire.

"I don't think Kurosaki-kun quite realises what he just did," noted Urahara to Rukia, who was still suffering flashbacks of imminent demise.

"He never does…" said Rukia weakly.

Soukyoku, once the burning pyre of execution, and now a beacon in the foreign land, swooping and dancing in the bright high sky above them, looked out across the patchwork of territories speckling the Spirit Realm. One of them harboured an intruder seeking to murder his king, and the bird crowed in mockery of the ant's pretension.

**o)0(o**

Somehow everyone had moved out on their quest, and she was alone by the gate. Why she hadn't noticed it happening was a mystery. Yoruichi paused on a hilltop, looking out across the collaged terrains for some sign of her comrades. A nearby wandering cat paused too, sitting quietly behind her. Scrawny black silhouette.

_tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-_

She gritted her teeth and ignored it, striding quickly down the slope to the red ribbons she could glimpse in the distance. But she soon noticed that blades of grass were not bending and crushing beneath her feet, that the wind was no longer blowing, that a bird was frozen in mid-flight high above her.

The cat's wire-thin tail had curled into a circle, three thin lines suspended in its centre. The clicking noise she despised had stopped.

"We have no need of each other," snapped the heiress. "I outran a nuclear bomb without your help."

"Benihime has hated me ever since," the cat disputed calmly, no visible mouth moving. It was rail-thin, emaciated, barely there. A child's scrawl of an animal shape. More time than space.

"_Interfering old-!"_ she hissed, pounding a fist crackling with shunkou into the thing's head. Without the cat appearing to move, she missed.

"Too slow," it noted diffidently. "None in your family were ever faster than me."

Yoruichi turned on her heel, throwing it a rude gesture, as if a rebellious attitude could have more effect than two hundred and more years she had ostracised it. She had summoned the zanpakuto only thrice in her lifetime. Once with Kisuke, to artificially master their elusive bankais. Once to qualify for her promotion to captain.

Once the day Hinoiri had been bequeathed to her; when her father retired as the head of the Shihouin clan. A noble family that existed to rule Soul Society no matter who lived or died there, whether its civilisation flourished or fell. Legend told of each soul born into that family being carefully selected by higher powers, perhaps beyond the Spirit King himself. But legend also kept the secret that they bore only a sole zanpakuto between them.

Hi no iri, the setting of the sun, the passage of time, the freedom from the same. He had chosen their family as a whole, but could pass from ancestor to descendent by forced means alone. Much like Ichigo acquiring Rukia's powers, Hinoiri's blade had to be driven through the heart of the successor. In the past it had triggered feuds as siblings tried to incite the heir to stab them and thus transfer the zanpakuto.

For Yoruichi it had felt like a shackle. Every other shinigami was free to pursue their own zanpakuto, their own soul mate. She, a princess with both influence and highly honed strength of her own, was passed a hand-me-down that her forefathers had tired of. By the time she realised no sword was a perfect match; that such bonds had to be built up slowly just as with friends and lovers, she had long since abandoned Hinoiri.

To all intents and purposes, the lack of a zanpakuto had no more weakened her than it had Zaraki.

"If we're so slow then just leave us behind you!" She continued to run away: though she could walk straight up to Aizen in this infinitely stretched moment, slit his throat; and never reach the next second where he died.

"I can wait," replied Hinoiri, the cat's voice never fading, echoing from within her heart, from the scar of transition. It curled up comfortably, tucking thin legs neatly under its anorexic body. It closed its dark eyes, purring like clockwork wound too tight. "I have all the time in the world."

On the clock sketched in the coil of its tail, the second-hand never twitched.

**o)0(o**

_**Shinigami Cup: Golden!**_

With Hitsugaya dispatched to the King's Realm to be tiger food, the newly promoted Kusajishi-taicho was left in charge of the POWs. She swaggered up and down the line of them like a sergeant, leering horribly from behind her eye patch.

"Haharr," cackled Yachiru, now convinced she was a pirate captain. "I'd like nothing better than to swashbuckle the entire snivelling lot o' yer!"

"Scuse me," objected Nel, and it was the first time Yachiru had ever looked down her nose at someone without having to use Ken-chan as a booster seat. She felt a heady rush of power.

"I'm Qween?" sniffed the tiny green-haired toddler. "I haff diploomatick immunityness. We forbid you to swishbluckle the woyal personage."

The heady rush of power rushed away again. "I'm a zanpakuto? My sole purpose in th' world is to eliminate you an' all your stinky kind. Yarr."

Nel considered this with fierce concentration. "Per…haps…we cood come to an…accord?"

Yachiru pointed her serrated knife at the imprisoned monarch. "Do ye have sugar?"

With an incredible level of sly cunning, Nel reached out and shook Yachiru by the hand.

"YOU'RE IT!" she shrieked and ran for the hills; Yachiru in hot pursuit, cheering maniacally.

Starrk, Hallibel and Ulquiorra shared a disbelieving glance.

"_She_ defeated _you_?" asked Schiffer in scathing disbelief, to which the wolf responded by stamping on his black tail with a flaming paw. The green eyes watered, threatening to spill down his emerald tear-tracks.

"_Desist_," scolded Tia. "Just be glad we quit Hueco Mundo before Nel became Queen. Whatever the death gods do to us, it will _not_ be Eternal Tag."

-0-

-0-

_**Chapter notes:**_

_An interbellum is the period between two wars, inter like inter and bell meaning war; like bellicose, belligerent. I originally called this chapter Gates to Nirvana, then realised I barely mentioned the gate at all. It took too long to describe the first time!_

_80 million kami is the phrase describing all gods and monsters and spirits and forces of nature in Shintoism. A kami is any kind of divine spirit, and eighty million is an idiom to describe their numerous and pervasive presence. __**Kami**__ and shini__**gami **__use the same kanji._

_Tiger Tiger Burning Bright is the famous poem by William Blake. I changed the second line, it should read 'In the forests of the night.'_

_Hi no iri means sunset. I guess we now know why Yoruichi had the totally unique power to turn into a cat that sounded like a man!_

_In author news, it was my birthday recently, and now I'm 24. I shall need a zimmerframe soon._

_Alliriyan~*_


	49. Symbiosis

**Hell Butterfly**

**Symbiosis**

**~49~**

**o)0(o**

"Oh?" Urahara called out before they'd taken two steps. "Where did Yoruichi-san go?"

Everyone looked around, mystified. "Aha!" cried Inoue. "She became a cat again!"

The skinny cat sitting on the crest of the hill gave her a rather insulted look, as if she shouldn't have been able to spot it.

"Yourichi-saaaan!" cooed Kisuke, scooping the cat up and spinning it round in happy circles. "…You've lost weight."

"I'll tell her you're a two-timer," warned the cat with amused venom in its voice. "He'll pet just any cat, I'll say. She'll hate you."

Urahara felt an icy shiver creep down his spine, and placed the zanpakuto spirit _ever so carefully_ back on the ground. "My apologies, Neko-kun. I mistook you for a friend of mine."

"Your friend would be insulted to hear that."

"Two down," noted Toushiro forebodingly, continuing the spirited-away Yoruichi's countdown.

"What?" asked Karin, eyes widening; "They're going to pick us off one by one?"

"Do not speak of your saviours with such enmity," growled the Soutaicho, and vanished with a flash step that they were all hard-pressed to keep up with. Karin clung to her brother's shoulders, hitching a piggyback ride through the land of the kami, and Inoue seemed to be windsurfing without a care in the world. Three of her Shun Shun Rikka had assembled a shield which she clung to like a sail, and Tsubaki was streaking past in a blaze of orange, drawing her fairy chariot along in his wake.

"What the hell is that?" asked Ichigo as it slowly dawned that no, he wasn't imagining things.

"It's Shiten Zoomshun!" explained Orihime happily, pleased to show off her new idea. "We just thought of it! And, well, I can't flash step, and it would be too embarrassing to ask anyone for a piggyback like Karin. Rukia-chan and Hitsugaya-san are both too short, Ukitake-san is poorly, Urahara-san is creepy, you're pre-booked, Yoruichi-san and Kyoraku-san have been kidnapped, Soutaicho-san and Sasakibe-san are too old, and so I had to do something," chirped Inoue, damning them all without batting an eyelid.

"Good…uh…initiative," said her boyfriend solemnly, all arguments vaporised by the Orihime Illogic Field. It swallowed anyone that got too close.

"Wait wait wait, slow down!" yelled the youngest of the pack. "Aren't you gonna tell us _anything_ about this place?" From her high vantage point on Ichi-nii's back, she could turn round and see the looks of trepidation on the faces around her. None of them had any idea what to expect, and were picturing things from their inner worlds that could be all kinds of inside out and deadly in reality. One scan of the jumbled horizon said they were probably right. There was an atmosphere of coiled springs, at any second a thousand kami might pounce and devour the 'ryokas' who had invited themselves into the King's domain; with none of Haineko's benign humour.

However Karin did note that by contrast Inoue was laughing and having the time of her life. Since the girl's womanly intuition was even worse than Yuzu's, they were probably doomed.

The grassy plains streaked past, quickly giving way to steep grey menhirs rising like skyscrapers between the ranks of equally lofty trees that extended hundreds of feet into the air. "Giant squirrels, I bet you, Ichi-nii," said Karin to her brother, who started to laugh, but the levity was immediately severed by Rukia's scream.

The tiny woman skidded to a halt in a clearing and sprinted towards the heap of white pelt dominating its centre. The other reapers followed, with varying success according to their reaction time. When travelling at shunpo speeds it was easy to overshoot, especially if you were Inoue and hadn't invented brakes for your Shiten Zoomshun.

"What's wrong?" barked the Soutaicho, looking over his shoulder at the followers who had abandoned their posts.

Rukia was tugging and pushing at the vast fur until several folds slid sideways and a spiked tail became visible, segmented like bamboo. There were indigo stripes slashed across the giant skin, a red baboon face as thin as a mask, all crumpled and distorted.

"It's completely empty," she told them with a look of horror, dwarfed by the mere remnant of one of the native creatures roaming the foreign realm.

"So?" responded Karin, but the captains also looked uncomfortable, beginning to recognise what was in a sense, their colleague.

"This is Zabimaru! I'm certain of it!" Though she had to strengthen her arms with reiatsu to shift the enormous heavy leather, the skeletal snake's head adorning the tip of the jagged tail was finally unveiled. Ichigo stepped back in surprise, he hadn't been there when Abarai Renji materialised his zanpakuto spirit's full form to crush Grimmjaw, had had no idea the serpent was in fact just one half of a two-headed nue. A chimera with baboon head, tiger legs, snake tail. Rukia had been there, and she had seen Zabimaru's true face high in the sky, the albino body hunched over them protectively, and knew she would never forget it. Renji had fainted within seconds at the effort.

"Soutaicho-sama!" shouted his recently-become partner, her voice slightly shaken. "What happens to our zanpakuto when they are damaged? Is he dead?"

"Of course they are hurt as well, do you need to beg the obvious?" Yamamoto ran a hand down his long beard, reminded himself that she was perhaps the only shinigami he had brought without bankai; that children still needed to be taught simple things. "In shikai the transfer between dimensions is weak, a shattered blade is easily reforged. But in bankai the bond is much tighter, damage amplified massively. The shinigami cannot force the sword to repair, it must await the zanpakuto to heal in its own time, in its own home. However I have never heard that the spirits here can be killed. Is that clear enough to you now?"

Rukia buried her hands in the coarse guard hairs to find the softer layer of white down underneath, and nodded uncertainly. To think that she was closer right now to the real Zabimaru than Renji might ever be…

Ichigo raised a hand, he'd found a norm and was eager to break it. "I repaired my bankai once. In Hueco Mundo. Took like half of my reiatsu to do."

"True story," confirmed Karin; "I'd sliced Zangetsu in half with my shiki." She kicked her steed with her heels in mock vengeance, as Hitsugaya hissed "Shi_**kai**_**!** And only if that zanpakuto was _real!_" at her in correction.

"Take that up with Zangetsu," snorted Genryuusai. "They are all different, these kami, and the lands here become unrecognisable every rare time I visit. That is why I gave you no warnings or guidelines. You'll find there is no way to prepare for truly everything and anything. We will be dependent on our reflexes for safe passage. I only hope you toddlers can keep up," jibed the ancient man, with his creaking joints and walking stick.

Kuchiki looked forlornly at her oldest friend's war comrade one last time. "If you're certain Hihio Zabimaru will recover…"

Sasakibe came forward and patted her shoulder, comforting his fellow lieutenant. "A nue is half snake, Kuchiki-san, most likely it has only shed its skin and gone elsewhere."

"Move out!" commanded the Commander-General, pointing to their guide Soukyoku, hovering in the blue sky like an early star. "Do not be distracted by every kami you see, there are countless legions of them." Then he remembered an old pearl of wisdom from centuries before, and looked at Karin and Inoue. "And do not speak to any you cannot recognise. They do not _all_ have contracts, and some may attempt to coerce or devour you if there is no zanpakuto spirit already laying claim."

With that warning ringing in their ears, they moved out.

**o)0(o**

The eerie stone forest, built to scale with a nue taller than any dinosaur, soon gave way to mountains as they marched across the variegated country. There were caves in the slopes hiding kami that watched warily as the visitors passed by, as the hills angled down into a valley the ground was littered with pagodas, which in turn became ancient stone shrines half buried in vines, Aztec burial mounds.

That was the simplest stretch of the journey, where all they had to wonder was just how old the three veterans in their crack troops were. With alarming regularity Yamamoto, Sasakibe and Ukitake were spotting spirits they recognised and calling out salutations. The zanpakuto would hide in the long grass, or pounce upon intruders from the sky, all shapes and sizes, streaks of murderous intent. And without fail one of the three ancient reapers would turn and cry out 'Jirahu! The 1200s wasn't it, with that young lad in 3rd squad?' bringing the spirit to an abrupt and embarrassed halt. It seemed to be a game of I Spy to the thousand-year-plus shinigamis, which for lesser beings was a source of heart attacks each time an enormous beast struck.

Then they heard a loud, air-shaking buzzing sound, and everyone came to a careful stop.

"Let me guess this one," suggested Urahara with a gloomy smile, staring at the racks of hexagonal white paper caves blocking their path. A bus would fit inside each one. "Suzumebachi. As in, very big wasps that are friends with a certain Soi Fon and her hundred year grudge against me. May I reiterate, I'd rather take the long way round?"

"If we attempt to circumvent every hostile zanpakuto we will never reach our destination this year," the Soutaicho chided the shopkeeper.

"But there's great benefit to getting there alive," giggled Kisuke, seeing as not one of them had carried a weapon since arriving. Perhaps he could swat them with his fan.

"I didn't know wasps made honey!" Inoue stuck a finger in a golden drop of nectar as big as her head and made to taste it.

"Why yes, a few species make poisonous honey," chirped the scientist, and Orihime froze with her tongue sticking out.

"Soi Fon's specialism is assassination via poisoning, Inoue-chan," explained Juushiro quickly, hustling the girl away from the sweet taste of death.

After leaping over the wasp nest and leaving the hive far behind them, the buzzing thrumming the air grew not quieter but louder, and most ran without looking back at the advancing swarm of elephant-sized hornets.

They were rescued by a freak hailstorm that pounded the angry killer bees into submission and repeated the favour to the travellers. Inoue extended a shield over her comrades with her last two fairies, and the journey continued in a bedraggled huddle.

"This morning you were protecting me, Itegumo," griped Rukia, rubbing the bruises on her shoulders, even if her snow-type powers meant she wasn't shivering blue like the rest.

"Weather turns quickly," quipped Ichigo, receiving a cold glare for his trouble.

Toushiro was the only one to stroll happily beneath the onslaught, filling his hands with hailstones and crunching them down like delicious ice cubes.

When the blizzard cleared, they were standing upon a tropical beach with a wide river for its sea, and a sideways current that ignored all laws of physics. Sadly none were the sunbathing type, and such bounty was quickly left behind in a trail of footprints.

_"Shiro-chan,"_ called a light voice as they traversed an enchanted mossy woodland. Leaving the others to go ahead, the smallest captain skidded to a halt and sought out the stranger that knew his name. It was not like Hyourinmaru or Haineko's echoing tones, and the nickname forced him to conclude...

"Tobiume," Hitsugaya bowed courteously. "It's an honour to meet my oldest friend's staunchest ally."

"You used to call her your sister," noted the kami, who despite being smaller than him had chosen to perch on a giant toadstool at the centre of a fairy ring of mushrooms so she could feel superior. "When did you begin to scorn Hinamori?"

"I don't scorn her!" protested Toushiro furiously. "I would never abandon her! But…she's too vulnerable to trust to the same degree as before, I'll admit..."

"A poor argument from a poor guardian!" - Though from the strained look on Tobiume's fey face, she completely agreed that Momo was gullible. She'd always been telling the girl to toughen up, and then it was too late.

"I can't protect her from her own decisions if I want to call myself her friend and not her jailor! But how am I supposed to help her? Who on earth trusts a man again after he stabs her?"

Tobiume was a petite, prettily dressed zanpakuto spirit in pink and purple priestess kimono, and a long wide sash about her shoulders on either end of which a large spherical temple bell clanged softly. She dangled one of these before his eyes like a hypnotist, swaying back and forth. "Aizen made her see you as he slew her. Her brother stabbing her in the back as she finally embraced the man she once loved. Do you wish her never to trust you again?"

It knocked all the breath out of him. He could imagine her horror, could see her turning round with those clouded eyes and crying out his name again, finally knew why she'd avoided him so long. "- That's... she never told me that..."

The flying plum tree looked away, mouth grim. "She cares too much for her useless little brother to break his heart like that, after suffering such grief herself."

No wonder it had been so difficult for Momo to recover. In addition to her severe wound, she'd had to force herself to believe in a captain's betrayal she'd never seen with her own eyes. "She's braver than anyone gave her credit for," stated Hitsugaya respectfully. "Though I still wonder why you hate me. You know I never stabbed her."

"Her naiveté saved ninety thousand lives and none have thanked her!" blazed the tiny girl suddenly, the crux of her annoyance. That the very trusting nature they'd warned her about had helped her halt Aizen's slaughter of Karakura Town. And then she had shown her true grit, and exposed his true body, whether its behaviour was a façade or not.

"Ohhh, I see," smirked the equally little captain. "You're just like Momo-bed-wetter... When you want a favour: ask, and don't feel the need to boss me about. I'll make sure she's thanked properly when I return to Soul Society."

Tobiume shouted in irritation at him, flinging her arms and bells out and whirling in graceful circles on the cap of the toadstool. The faster she danced, the brighter her chiming bells glowed with heat.

Toushiro fled back to the group, keeping his eyes on Soukyoku's guiding flare to locate them, a dozen fireballs dogging his heels.

Once he'd scarpered, Tobiume sighed and flopped down onto her mushroom, spinning a brass bell on the tip of her finger. "A guardian of the heavens is not necessarily a good guardian for the tiny creatures far below the sky, Shiro-chan."

**o)0(o**

There were villages, deserted, that he darted through as he tried to catch up, and then suddenly nothing like falling off the edge of the planet. Empty blue sky extended in all directions, the ground stolen away, nothing above except a lapis crescent moon, almost invisible against the atmosphere.

"What the hell?" gasped Toushiro, tumbling head over heels in the vacant space, forgetting which way was up. A flock of crows wobbled into his vision, flapping sideways down the sky. Two somersaults later he realised they were shinigami and propelled himself towards them.

"Now what?" he yelled at the leader once in earshot, and the Soutaicho was the only one standing calmly, certain of his up-down orientation. Though since he was diagonal to everyone else, everyone else was extremely off-kilter.

"I think it's my dad's zanpakuto!" called back Ichigo, not that Hitsugaya had ever addressed him. "The invisible one, that's why we can't see the ground!" On his shoulders Karin was laughing as if loving the anti-gravity, and Toushiro noted sourly that she seemed to be over her vertigo.

"Engetsu, scathing moon," said the boy, recalling his years under Isshin's caring misguidance. "Despite its name, I assumed it would be better-natured than to trap us like this."

"Maybe Oyaji-baka's sword is gonna give us a water flume all the way to our destination?" grinned Karin, who had heard from her brother and father himself about Engetsu's bizarre modus operandi.

Ichigo groaned wretchedly, he put his whole soul into the sound. "You _didn't_, Karin..."

"What?" taunted his devious little sister as the air began to slip away under their feet, dragging everyone down like a flash flood. "I could've said much worse. Like 'volcanoes', or –" Ichigo gagged her before she could dig them deeper.

**o)0(o**

The 'water flume' moved more like a twenty loop rollercoaster, spiralling them all the way back to the ground that had vanished and skimming the ash-choked mouth of an active volcano along the way, where they had another visitation from the ember-cat Haineko. Who was not too lazy to pounce upon each of them like a kitten hunting leaves, snapping them up in white hot teeth whenever they were swirled too close to the pool of magma and hurling them out of the mountain's hollow peak with a flick of her powerful neck. No clothes escaped unharmed.

Rukia and Toushiro were still arguing over whether Haineko had protected them from lava-fuelled demise or just wanted to rip holes in their precious captain cloaks.

Whistling through the air with no apparent concern for their landing, the delegation from Soul Society eventually hit a vast body of water like history's most enthusiastic human cannonball.

That did at least silence the arguing.

Ichigo, as he flew like an arrow, saw the glimmering green lake ahead and could be forgiven for thinking it fortunate. However hitting water that fast gives it something like the consistency of set concrete. So he took a chance and fired several bala at it from his fingertips, little ones, all he dared use in the absence of Zangetsu, not because he was scared of getting wet or even particularly worried about bring thrown through concrete (wouldn't be the first time), but because Karin didn't have his... he supposed it must be hierro, and would be pancaked on impact.

Right now she had nothing to protect her but him, and that was more than worth risking a little hollow vaporisation.

The back draft of the explosion sent them shrieking back up into the air, and no little sisters were flattened that day. With their speed reduced, Ichigo finally regained control and stood gasping in mid-air.

All other shinigami had braked with much greater grace, except Inoue who went into submarine mode and plunged beneath the waves with a geyser-like splash (far easier to make her shield a bubble than figure out how to stop). And Juushiro, who bombed, appeared to drown and shortly resurfaced screaming about sharks.

"Is it Tiburón?" asked Karin with morbid curiosity and no fear for the captain's life.

"Taicho!" cried Rukia, diving to his defence, but before she could cast any kido Juushiro's screams dissolved into laughter.

"Ahhh they're eating me alive! Ahhhh hahaha it tickles..."

"Fish spa?" chirped Urahara, who'd offered it in the shouten briefly until a certain black cat had eaten all the fish, and to this day Yoruichi denied all knowledge of such an incident, though at times had drunkenly complained that doctor fish bit back.

"Ukitake-san... it's Pisces isn't it? Not sharks!" scolded Rukia, feeling gullible and cross.

"Captain Koi Carp strikes back!" announced Karin, saluting.

Orihime's submarine resurfaced and remodelled itself into a saucer-shaped hovercraft skimming atop the waves, and picked up the soggy Thirteenth captain on the way past.

Two vast, elegant fish followed him out of the water, trailing long red fins like silk banners and pierced with silver hoops. They swirled around him, copper and indigo, the size of sharks, and Ichigo recalled the tiny goldfish of that morning.

"Is this how big they're meant to be when you bankai?" he asked, and Ukitake's delighted smile vanished.

"You mean that enormous whirlpool was only a fraction of your power? Wow, you're awesome, Captain Koi Carp!" said Karin quickly, punching her brother in the skull. Ichigo hadn't heard the poor guy lament his weakness, but she had been there, and sympathised.

"Aha, that's right," beamed the old young man. "They don't invite just anyone to the Zero Division after all." He paused. "In fact they barely invite anyone at all. With me, and Hikifune-chan a century later..." He began to count on one hand. "Well never mind," he chirped. "They're perilously strong you know."

"Let me introduce you, these two are the beautiful Sougyo no Kotowari, individually I like to call them Bubble and Squeak. Bubble, Squeak, these are my friends Yama-jii, Tadaoki- kun, Shiro-chan, Getaboshi, Rukia-chan, Berry-tan, Fairy-chan and Zero-chan. Neko-chan and Mr Pink have already gone on ahead."

"Ukitake-taicho, you're worse than Yachiru…" whispered the Kuchiki rep in horrified awe.

Juushiro waved this aside. "This is how I discuss gossip with Bubble and Squeak in my head. Using your full names, they might not know who I mean. They're only fish, you know, their memories are a little shaky."

One of his angelfish nudged him, somehow nibbling at his cloak until the damp invite fell out a pocket.

"Head straight to the palace?" Ukitake picked up the soggy, bedraggled parchment of utmost value, and regarded his pet fish sympathetically. The brief separation had cut surprisingly deep, and their reunion left him deeply cheerful. "You've waited very patiently for me these two hundred years... alright! Shall we go in advance? I assume you fellows still need to seek your own adorable zanpakutos…?"

"Yes, I can't wait to meet &#*+*-chan," mocked Karin dryly. "She sounds like a real sweetheart."

The Soukyoku swooped down to the lake's surface and began to nudge Ichigo, its favourite victim, in their new direction, impatient to be moving on. The Kurosaki yelped and shrouded himself in thicker reiatsu every time the little phoenix pecked, throwing insults and tossing Karin into the lake where she wouldn't be burnt to a cinder.

"Settle down," advised Yamamoto with a low laugh, stroking the firebird's head with a bare hand. It cooed at him and pointed a wing east.

"How are you _doing_ that?" stammered Ichigo, pointing at unharmed skin amidst superheated feathers with a trembling finger.

"Fire is one of my oldest friends," disclosed the Soutaicho in a dark voice, and the Substitute didn't dare press the pyromaniac any further.

"DON'T! _Throw me into!_ **SHARK PITS**, Ichi-nii!" bellowed Karin, as Inoue and Hitsugaya scooped her out of the kami-infested waters.

**o)0(o**

At Soukyoku's insistence they were soon traversing a wild, windy tundra, where nothing grew but bracken and, worryingly, skulls on spikes…

"The red pathway," indicated Genryuusai, stepping onto the lumpy, hillocked road of scarlet tiles, undulating like sand dunes for over a mile. Three flash steps later, and Sasakibe asked delicately, "This is not exactly a red carpet to the palace, is it, Eijisai?"

"Of course not," scorned the oldest man in Soul Society.

"Then what…or who, is it?"

"You may feel free to ask it when we reach its head."

As some clambered over the scarlet dragon's snoring nose and others abseiled daringly down its long whiskers (all Kurosakis lack survival instincts, being born from dead parents); its jaws cracked open and sleepily enquired whether they were seeking dragon pearls. Its voice rumbled beneath their feet and had the heavily-accented twang of a fortune teller.

"Why the fuck would we want one of them?" snapped Ichigo, whose temper had been subtly fraying the longer they remained in the Spirit Realm. Possibly due to the constant harassment by godlike beings.

"Dragonball Z!" hissed Karin, sliding down the whisker next to his. "Superpowers! I want one!"

"I've already got superpowers," grumbled her brother, and a gush of stinking hot air rushed over them as the beast spoke up again.

"**Dragon pearls good luck for **_**you**_**! Luck useful for **_**lots**_** of things, mmm. Fight well, win one from me!" **

Ichigo was calculating furiously. "Luck-Luck dance, dragon crest…redness… Houzukimaru!"

A ruby eye snapped open and swivelled down. **"Did revelation hurt measly brain, Kurosaki Ichigo? You late for rematch."**

Kurosaki Ichigo released the whisker and dropped, suddenly realising how very, very stupid it was to tickle sleeping dragons. "H-Hey, do the Luck-Luck Dance for us so we beat Aizen, yeah?" And then he vanished, already crossing the horizon in tactical retreat.

The lazy dragon began to heave itself to its short legs, knocking aside the earth that piled against its sides during its long naps, leaving a long riverbed pattern in the displaced mud. A long red snake tongue licked out between its blood-stained fangs, pierced with a lustrous white pearl just before the slit.

"**Luck? Luck not save you always!"** thundered the Chinese Dragon, launching itself into the sky. The ground quaked and cracked, but then the vast wyrm floated freely, the ribbon of a celestial kite. **"Fortune and flowers last not forever. Rely not on one egg, but pluck feathers from every passing goose. To attract luck, write your name on wings of dragon!"**

"He doesn't even have wings," said Hitsugaya.

"He lives on fortune cookies," said Karin.

"But look at him go! Houzukimaru-kun's dancing is _amazing_!" gasped Orihime in awe.

"Stop gawping or you'll get left behind, children," Urahara chivvied them, though he would happily admit the luck-luck dragon dance was highly impressive. Evidently Ikkaku hadn't the mile-long spine to properly imitate it.

"So, once we're done playing this riveting game of _Pin the Zanpakuto On the Shinigami_…" continued the humble shopkeeper, moonwalking his shunpo out of boredom.

Hitsugaya was quite sharp in his reply after the 'children' comment, which he was convinced had been aimed at him specifically. "You seem overly disinterested, are you not seeking Benihime?"

"Oh you think she'll recover from decapitation? That's a shame…"

"Don't you want your cane-sword back, Geta-boshi?" pointed out Karin, and Kisuke clapped his hands and gave her some shop sweets from his pocket.

"Aha! I'm feeling down because I have no walking stick to poke Kurosaki-kun with! Perhaps there _are_ arguments in favour of toting Benihime around!"

Examining her prize, Espada Zero filed a formal complaint. "Hey, old creep, why's my Pocky out of date?"

"Fluctuation in the time-space continuum when crossing dimensions…or blame Tessai… Does anyone else hear that enthralling music?"

"No," snorted Hitsugaya, as Urahara began to wander away, a nervous grimace constricting his face, and not because a former weapon of mass destruction was unhappy with her Pocky.

"Look after the babies, won't you, Inoue-chan? I think I hear a certain oni screaming my name…" He patted her shoulder and vanished, a millisecond before Toushiro attempted to throttle him.

"Four down," announced Karin, starting to fear when her turn would come. Their ranks were thinning fast, and she was running out of captains to hide behind.

**o)0(o**

Standing in magnificent gardens, the shinigamis paused for a minute to take in the view.  
Each kami moulded its patch of land to suit its nature, resulting in a sprawl of wildly different habitats crammed next to each that the real world could not hope to replicate. And the laws of nature and physics clearly took a backseat to imagination, with all the rising waterfalls, upside down pyramids, floating cloud cities, giant sculptures and square rainbows.

"It's like a video game in real life," noted Karin, which explained why the human contingent were not as bowled over as the younger death gods were.

"Can anyone see sideways skyscrapers?" asked Ichigo, peering with a hand shading his eyes.

"I can see a cherry blossom forest! That must be Nii-sama's zanpakuto! Perhaps we should go pay our respects?"

"Would you walk through a canopy of razor blades without his blessing?" growled Yamamoto.

In the distance a wind blew, and the petals dancing in it scythed through the fields of golden wheat like a combine harvester. "Eh... no," admitted Rukia with her teeth on edge. "Nnnooo. But what do you suppose Senbonzakura Kageyoshi's true form looks like?"

"Rusty," grunted the Soutaicho, and Hitsugaya covered his mouth to stifle a gasp.

"That's unfair, Soutaicho," complained Rukia.

"He did not need to repeat his first mistake. He lost his chance to meet his king. And weakened our party."

"You mean I lack bankai! I'm not the only one, Sasakibe is also just a lieutenant, and Inoue is only human, and Karin's no more than a gamble…"

The oldest of them looked away to hide his laughter. "Sasakibe has bankai."

"What?" Half of the group stared at the First Division lieutenant in disbelief.

"How do you think I got this scar?" Shigekuni pointed a thumb at his crinkled forehead.

"But he never does anything! Ichigo knocked him out in one punch!"

"None truly wanted your death that day, Rukia-san," retorted Choujirou, Ichigo clearly the thorn in his side. He attempted to make his ignoble defeat seem intentional.

"In that case... thank you for not laying the smack down on Ichigo when he came to save me." Rukia bowed, hiding a sneer towards her rescuer with the polite motion. Ichigo rolled his eyes in reply.

"Indeed." sniffed Sasakibe, mollified.

"Wow, a glass forest!" Orihime was still admiring a landscape as jumbled as her brain. "Beautiful!"

"Where?! We're going there next! No arguments!"

"Is it ice?" asked Toushiro, stretching onto tiptoes like a meerkat attempting to see further. "_Finally._" And the two ice-type reapers smiled at each other.

"We could have the mother of all snowball fights," grinned the Kuchiki, remembering Rukongai winters.

"No." said Toushiro sternly.

**o)0(o**

They walked through shimmering crystal woods, glass leaves chimed and glittered coldly, breath came in puffs of frozen smoke, snow crunched nostalgically underfoot. Skin began to turn purple.

At length they discovered a carved ice pagoda, ringed with blue ferns like frost patterning a window, and a snow queen and ice king were playing chess with tiny icicle figurines that looked suspiciously like the Gotei 13 officers.

"Oh I love chess! How quintessentially British!" chuckled Sasakibe, receiving a glare from the Soutaicho who preferred Shogi.

The yukionna glanced up, pursing her indigo tinged lips, and the regal man opposite her shifted a couple of key pieces whilst she was distracted.

"So the false Kuchiki and the Guardian have finally arrived. And the infamous Deathberry."

Rukia smacked Ichigo on the back. "Go thank her!"

"Why?"

"This is the most beautiful snow zanpakuto, of course! My Sode no Shirayuki!"

The Substitute raised an eyebrow. "And? Who's the other guy?"

"_Ichigo_…have you forgotten who gave you shinigami powers in the first place?"

Ichigo's eyes opened wide and he stumbled forwards. He wasn't exactly one for formal gratitude, unless it should be an apology for stealing all of Rukia's powers. He had no idea what to say.

The white-robed snow woman held a hand out to him gracefully. "Do you recognise this chill of death?" she asked lightly. "When I lent you my strength you devoured it ravenously like one starving."

"Uh..." Now he really didn't know what to do. All he recalled of Rukia stabbing him was owowowowow, and then kicking ass with a feeling like his veins were on fire. He had never seen his icy benefactor or heard her voice at all.

"This is one of the sisters you protected with my gift?" Shirayuki crouched before Karin with a look of curiosity, whilst the girl's teeth chattered and her lungs expelled thick clouds.

"Yeah, Karin and Yuzu. Briefly." He looked askance at Rukia, who face-palmed.

"You owe her everything," prompted the shinigami; "and me."

"Yep, that," sweated Ichigo. "Thanks. I never would have got an Inner Hollow, been killed, hacked to bits by captains, or beaten up by Vaizards without you. I appreciate it."

"I in turn thank you for defending Rukia from Soukyoku at her execution. That is quite an unprecedented feat." She stared up at sky. "_No_, don't come down you stupid bird! You'll melt _everything_! It wasn't an invitation!"

"Maybe I've only managed to save one person so far, no matter how hard I tried... but without you it would be none," said Ichigo, with genuine gratitude, ignoring the graceless aside.

"Correct," said Shirayuki with Rukia's trademark modesty. Smug beneath her elegant airs.

The unknown man stood up, resigned to his game being interrupted. His teal hair hung to his waist in a wild mane, he was robed in pastel silks and golden sun crests, with hands of frost and a long ice tail coiled about his bench. A cross shaped scar or tattoo was emblazoned across his cheeks and forehead like a pale burn.

"_Do you not know me?"_ he asked with cool humour. His voice seemed to echo, as if it belonged to something much bigger.

Some people glanced at Sasakibe of the mystery zanpakuto, until Hitsugaya choked and shouted; "_Hyourinmaru?"_

The lord raised his eyebrows silently.

"I was looking for a dragon!" reproached the snow-haired taicho.

Hyourinmaru, guardian of the heavens, glanced at the game table. _"Dragons find it hard to play chess," _he explained simply, _"with their hundred foot wingspans. You were one of her knights, by the way, since I was playing the dark side."_

"Who was winning?" asked Inoue, always curious.

"_Since he is now here, I would call that Aizen."_ Hyourinmaru glared accusation at the Soutaicho. _"Who let the thief into the treasurehouse?"_

"The thief will be killed by his cursed riches soon enough," snarled Yamamoto. "We came as witnesses, since the Zero Squad are no doubt bored and glad for the fight. My role is to protect Soul Society and the living."

"_And are they safe now?"_

"Are they ever?" mocked the Soutaicho bitterly.

Hyourinmaru nodded in understanding and wrapped an icy arm round Toushiro's small shoulders, ushering the tiny captain away out of earshot. His master went helplessly. _"We must discuss your so-called 'treasure', Toushiro. I will aid you in finding the source of her powers, to whatever end, however I forbid you to follow her beyond that. The Spirit Realm can afford to lose her, but we are bound to stay and protect heaven."_

"A treasure is not something you simply throw away!" retorted Hitsugaya angrily. "That was the entire point!"

"_That tribute you gave me is not treasure."_ Hyourinmaru's eyes were burning rubies, just like his dragon form. _"Not a thing to hoard for its value, but a weapon to hide for its danger. I admit that a Vaizard can wield a zanpakuto now, Zangetsu was...furious at me for suggesting otherwise. But Naraku is no kami."_

"Then what?" hissed Toushiro, glaring up at the dragon man fearlessly.

"_There are things we call gods... and things we call by other names entirely. A zanpakuto is not a species, reaper. Nor is it a guarantee. Only a contract."_

Hitsugaya looked uncomfortably over his shoulder, at Karin who was weighing a snowball in her hand and eyeing the first division lieutenant.

"Is it my decision at all?" he wondered.

"_You can dissuade Karin from seeking Naraku."_

"And won't her zanpakuto seek her regardless?"

"_It would take a twisted kind of miracle for that…thing…to reach her here…"_

**o)0(o**

"It is long past time we proceeded to the palace," announced the Soutaicho.

"Not yet," sniffed Shirayuki. "You have no authority in my territory. This 'proud' Kuchiki has been stunted in growth by her vaunted brother. She requires... remedial lessons."

The adopted noble gawped at her zanpakuto spirit. "Shirayuki, did Ichigo corrupt you? I can't grow stronger in half an hour!"

"This is not Soul Society! I am standing right before you, you need not materialise a spirit from a foreign dimension! If I wish for you to have bankai I need only give it to you!"

"Bankai?" purred Rukia hopefully. "Faster than Ichigo?" Her eyes were enormous, glittering, envisioning mighty powers. The striking down of a certain cocky substitute, the cackling in triumph before a certain brother.

"Only if you survive it," warned Shirayuki, frigid; "and for a noble you're dreadfully uncouth."

"Do I need to train too?" asked Hitsugaya, perhaps that would be an easy way to avoid the choice about Karin.

"_No, you are a captain,"_ snorted Hyourinmaru. _"I did not choose a genius for the joy of forever babysitting them through training. You have already make remarkable progress with Hyouten Hyakkasou."_

"Damn," muttered Hitsugaya. "And what do you mean, babysitting? !"

"Enough," said Shirayuki to them both. "Kurosaki Ichigo, Zangetsu lives west of here. The rest of you may leave where you wish. But my noble 'mistress' will train here with me until she deserves her borrowed name."

"Six or seven down," Karin clapped Toushiro on the head with a brittle smile before clambering back onto her brother's shoulders for the next leg of the adventure. "Have fun with the flying iceberg."

"No need to look so scared," jibed Hitsugaya, hiding his matching apprehension. "I'll be with you when it's your turn."

"Can't you tell she doesn't want her turn?" Ichigo interrupted them in an intensely flat, angry voice. He tugged on his little sister's ankles, almost as if he could hold onto her and not let go, and keep her safe that way. "She shouldn't have come."

Karin huffed, crossing her arms on his ginger head. "I want to fight."

"That badly?" challenged her brother, and he knew exactly what kind of monster she'd been, had faced her head-on. It wasn't an idle warning. And if she couldn't regain that wretched state then she had only come here to die.

The little girl hid her eyes, buried her face in his short, spiky hair. She dripped sarcasm. "Of course. Who wouldn't?" She didn't see what alternative they had when Aizen-sama was already in heaven, drawing nearer and nearer to its throne with every passing minute.

Hitsugaya sighed, making his choice and already regretting it. "Let's go, then."

Ichigo flinched away from the captain. "She's staying with _me_," stated the Substitute, furious. "And I'm not taking Karin _anywhere_ till I've got Zangetsu back!"

Hyourinmaru - cloaked in ice and wings once more - loomed over the Kurosakis, a white shadow. _"We do not have the luxury of avoiding risks."_ The dragon plucked Karin from her steed with frostbite jaws.

"I agree with Ichi-nii!" jabbered Karin, dangling by the scruff of her white uniform, flailing her arms. "I can wait, really!"

And then the white butterfly drifted past her wide eyes, flickering towards her fate, a clear beckons. It whispered a name to her, almost audible. She fell still, blood draining from her face.

"_Naraku?_" whispered the Zero. She lunged for it, forgetting everything else, even her brother, even the dragon breathing icy mist down her neck. The insect enthralled her, leaving no choice but to chase the lure to her doom.

"I won't let her out of my sight," vowed Hitsugaya hurriedly, blocking Ichigo from charging forwards. His sword had returned silently, rimed with hoarfrost. "But you also need to ready yourself for war. What use are you like this?"

Wild brown eyes flared at Toushiro, a dark snarl creeping from the Vaizard's throat. And just as the brother lashed out, a shadow crashed into him and slammed him against one of the glass trees in a shattering of icicles.

"There is no time left. No time to look back and repent, no time to glance sideways and see the wasteland you stand in. No time to glimpse ahead and prepare yourself. There is no time to perceive. Falter just once more, and _I _will kill you myself."

Ichigo choked, Zangetsu's flesh-and-blood hand pinning his neck to a pillar of ice. "_That midget is stealing Karin!_" he rasped, staring at the zanpakuto spirit in shock. Said midget took the opportunity to leap onto Hyourinmaru's crested back and take flight, chasing an albino moth across a snowy tundra.

"It has been set in stone since the day she died. She can no more escape that creature than you can escape me. And you have no right or power to interfere, _Ichigo!_ Stop staring at the back of defeat; close your eyes and move forwards!"

**o)0(o**

The boy was shaking with rage. He didn't want to acknowledge his zanpakuto, but he couldn't break free either.

"You will behave now," ordered Zangetsu, the words directed to the Hollow.

Ichigo huffed rebelliously, every inch the moody teenager, not meeting his eyes. Karin was long gone already. There was no more point in struggling.

"Why do I sense that other you is still lurking inside and watching?"

"It's not like we can act separately anymore," spat Ichigo, he was beginning to feel hyper-alert, as if Zangetsu was about to spring.

"Very well," said the blade, turning away, releasing his captive master.

"Wait."

He looked back, an eyebrow raised, inviting the next question.

"There is little time for waiting, Ichigo. The enemy is deep inside the gates."

"_Make_ time. Is my Hollow going to die here?"

"No one is hunting you, Ichigo. Besides, I thought you two had reconciled."

"Every _atom_ is hunting me here. He…don't you get it? Ever since I arrived, the Hollow's been hiding in case… _Hichigo is scared shitless!_ Did you see Wonderwice burn up? Nel? Toushiro was right – what use am I at half strength?" Too much had happened for Ichigo to pretend that he could stay stable, sane and safe. Every step in the King's Realm was a step on thin, crackling ice.

Zangetsu shook his head in disgust, wavy brown hair shrouding his stubbled face. "So, you started to fight out of fear for your friends, stopped when you feared to hurt them, and now you fear for your own self? How do you find such ludicrous ways to move backwards after how far you've come?"

"_Because it's fucking claustrophobic here."_ There was a hunted glint in his brown eyes. A shimmer of the Hollow peering out at a poisonous world. "If my Hollow half is destroyed, do I die? Or even if it _fixes_ me, it doesn't matter, I can't fight Aizen without the Hollow! I can't fight like _this_!"

"You're used to the aura of impending death, Ichigo."

"I've died a few times and all; doesn't mean I like it."

And this was the strange thing, in his effort to hide from his hostile environment, he was actually pulling all his reiatsu into himself. The shroud of power that haunted his every movement was seeping into his skin, fleeing the hostile environment. The oozing had finally ceased. Now he _simmered_. In the face of adversity he had at last made progress, yet Ichigo seemed unaware of his new talent.

If he could no longer survive as a Vaizard, he'd have to become a better shinigami. "Don't you have anything stronger, Zangetsu-jii?"

The living sword hunched into its black robes and high white collar. He had no desire to pursue this route. "Fighting is fighting. A clash of opposing forces. There is no need to overcomplicate it. Getsuga Tensho is all I have for you, it is up to you to wield it wisely."

The teenager looked quite desperate, his scowl out in full force. It felt wrong to belittle his zanpakuto like this, making demands for more power after everything Zangetsu had given him. "But Getsuga Tensho is nothing to Aizen. _I need more._ You must have something else."

Zangetsu's face turned ugly and he punched Ichigo brutally down into a deep snowdrift. "You will not ask again!" thundered the kami. "I cannot control your reiatsu for you, and it's that which cripples you! You have no basic skills! You use brute strength as a crutch!"

The second Ichigo emerged from his pit, Zangetsu lifted his master by the throat and slammed him against a tree again. It was somehow scarier than their sword fights, somehow defenceless. Ice slush dripped down his spine. "I know what you have come begging for," he growled, frowning behind the bright orange shades; "and believe me when I say I will _never_ give you _Mugetsu_."

"N-No problem…" croaked Ichigo, raising his hands in hoarse surrender. "…What the hell is _Mugetsu_?"

"Moonless Sky. The Final Getsuga. Final, for there would be no more spiritual powers left in either of us for the rest of our lives after summoning it. It condenses all future potential energy into a single moment; decades, centuries compressed into a second. I might lose my ability to be a zanpakuto permanently."

Ichigo whistled, raising his eyebrows. "What if you missed?"

"Mugetsu cannot _miss!"_ scorned Zangetsu, incredulous.

"Just one chance sounds kinda risky…"

"You underestimate its power. Nothing can avoid Mugetsu."

"So it destroys _everything_? That's shit. That's like saving the world from Aizen by blowing it up."

Zangetsu removed his flashy amber shades and pinched the bridge of his aquiline nose, sighing. Ichigo's density, whilst in his best interests, was also wearying. "Regardless, I shall never give you Mugetsu. You couldn't master it in time to halt Aizen, in any case."

"I don't even want it," agreed Ichigo blandly. "I don't care what's trying to kill me; that is not a good pay off." He shook some lingering ice cubes out of his shihakusho, and thought of Masaki. "I'd defeat Aizen and die two days later to the Grand Fisher."

"Usually you are willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of stopping the threat."

"But you don't want me to unmake everything you are, do you?" said Ichigo with soft and surprising insight. He changed the topic quickly, unused to conversing with his sword at such length and depth. "What's the Zero Division everyone kept talking about?"

Zangetsu looked slightly uncomfortable. How to explain, that it wasn't his own losses he feared, but the vulnerabilities of Ichigo after the war? Being blind to the fate of his faithful proxy? "Powerful as the entire Gotei Thirteen. Powerful enough to deny you a share of the kill, and the Spirit King is even more so. Yet… I doubt most members of the Royal Guard could wrestle Soukyoku with their bare hands."

The redhead stared at his hands, shivered in the cold air, and finally threw caution to the winds. "You're saying I'm stronger than Squad Zero." For good measure, he threw a snowball at the stern zanpakuto spirit too. "Don't fuck with me!"

The tall man scraped compacted snow off his face, keeping his temper with the patience of a saint. An angry saint. "Your spiritual pressure has been freakish since long before Rukia changed your life. Your parents were both captain-class. You saw ghosts before you learnt to walk. You attained my bankai in three days. You have a Hollow, a zanpakuto, and Soul Awakening, blessing or curse. You may waste and fumble over ninety percent of your reiatsu, and any one of the Royal Guard could wipe the floor with you, but don't insult me by acting surprised at this late stage in the game."

Ichigo deflated. "Fine. Whatever. So I ooze. I know I'm a freak. But why? I can't even stop Yammy and you're saying I'm stronger than the royal bastards everyone's hoping will kill Aizen for us? Your maths is faulty."

"Potential is only an ideal. You've still yet to harness your full strength, when you barely keep your skin in one piece."

"But why _me?_" whined the botched prodigy, banging his head against a translucent tree in frustration.

"…It is because you are _still alive_, Ichigo."

"Is that all?" complained the boy, incredulous. He wished he had a table just so he could fling it in the air. "Bullshit!"

"All? _All?_ It seems you have finally learnt to ask questions, Ichigo, so prepare yourself to also accept the answers!"

Zangetsu had become incandescent with fiery reiatsu, and the shinigami scrambled away in shock.

"_You are still alive, of course that is __**all!**__" _

**o)0(o**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

**Zanpakuto Cribz**

The glass trees thinned out and the ground vanished abruptly, dropping straight into a grand canyon. Karin shrieked, Inoue pulled up short and Ichigo forged onwards in a suicidal leap of faith. The opposite side of the gorge had a house, a sprawling mansion of wood and red stone and white windows, inexplicably glued to the cliff face.

"Fucking sideways gravity," grumbled Ichigo. "I knew it was his fault. Stop screaming Karin, I can fly remember?"

"Then start flying!" yelled his sister.

"Is falling sideways the same thing?" asked the reaper gingerly, as the broken gravity caught them and they plummeted face-first towards the cliff wall.

-o-o-o-

The carroty shinigami peeled himself out of a crater, glaring blearily at Karin and her innocent shrug. "We'd've been fine if you hadn't decided to use me as a landing cushion! !"

"Welcome, Ichigo," said Zangetsu grandly. "As you can see, I do not live on a flagpole. Or on the moon."

"I feel inexplicably ragingly jealous," confessed Ichigo, staring at the topsy turvy, anything goes manor house.

"That would be Hichigo, since your inner world is severely boring."

"I gave you trees!"

"Yes, but we wanted a puppy."

"Are you both clinically insane?" asked Karin. "Because Dad can give you pills for that."

"How about you go play with the pet pterodactyl?" Zangetsu shooed her away gently. The Kurosakis were gobsmacked.

"What."

"I never back down from attaining my goals. If one wishes to own the last dodo, one simply does it. As for my Shetland unicorn, and albino alligator that lives beneath my glass-floored living room…" His house and garden were crammed with souvenirs of a long existence adventurously spent. The sword's dissatisfaction with Ichigo's spartan inner world suddenly began to make perfect sense.

"This is definitely the interior decorating of a guy who doesn't think twice," snickered the tomboy, before sprinting off to locate the menagerie.

"Don't hold back, Ichigo!" commanded Zangetsu darkly, making the boy leap to attention. He gestured towards a garden table. "Help yourself to cake."

**o)0(o**

"So… are you and Shirayuki together?" asked Hitsugaya out of burning curiosity towards the secret lives of zanpakutos.

"We will have super powerful snow babies," said the dragon proudly and without hesitation. "Not to mention handsome."

"You can call them Jack and Frosty," muttered Toushiro.

"I was thinking of calling the firstborn Shiro-chan," sniped his zanpakuto.

Hitsugaya began to scratch **Karin Zero Wos 'Ere** on Hyourinmaru's ice-sheet wings.

"What are you doing back there?" hissed the dragon.

"…What? She's going to need a hell of a lot of luck!"

**o)0(o**

_Author Notes: Symbiosis title referring to the bond between zanpakuto and their shinigami._

_Also, I have been going through previous chapters and edited Ch40, 43, 45, and 48; namely: Grimmjaw's last words are less pansy, Barragan is not the Primera Espada, added some more Aizen/Momo convo that I wrote messily on a sleeper bus in the dark on the way to Laos and couldn't translate till now, and the Vaizards were not present at the war meeting in Seireitei, that was a typo._

_I'm going backpacking around Xishuangbanna, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam over the Spring Festival holidays, so there will be no updates for at least 5/6 weeks, though I might get a lot of writing done on the rickety buses we'll be taking everywhere! …If I can read it afterwards._

_Happy New Year!_

_Alliriyan~*_


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